Summary:

What If the Deviants won?

In 1000 AD, the last member of the original Eternals' team, Sersi, is hunted and killed by an evolved deviant. With her gone, a new crop of unlikely heroes (both familiar and new), must rise up to save Earth centuries before the Avengers as we know them, ever came into being.

Prologue

999 AD

Last Day of the Year

Sersi stepped a few paces back, in order to get a better view of her handiwork.

By all accounts the nine distinct burial sites before her where off exquisite design. Each one oozing with care and effort that not even an army of Earth's finest artisans could hope to replicate. Not just because it required the ability to precisely mold and warp all kinds of disparate elements together on a molecular level, in order to create extremely rare or even completely new compounds. But also because each tombs' design and engravings managed to capture the long and storied history of each occupant , in a way only another immortal and close friend could have done.

As Sersi continued to stare at her work a cynical voice from within couldn't help but question herself as to her motivation for making this. It's not like any of their bodies were capable of decaying or being scavenged by regular animals. So that removed the main practical need for an enclosed tomb. And it was far more ostentatious than any of her other eternals would have wanted. With the possible exception maybe Kingo. Overall it was a purely selfish act, concluded her inner voice, done to appease her and her alone. A way of making her feel like she had done something worthwhile.

"But you didn't do anything worthwhile" the voice sneered in her mind. "At the very least you could have died alongside your comrades as they fought to fulfil their sacred role of wiping out the deviant infestation on this planet. Regardless of the cost".

Unprompted tears began to well up in her eyes, which surprised Sersi somewhat. She had thought by now she had used up all her tears, with all the mourning she had done already.

She angrily blinked them back and sucked in some calming breathes of air.

"Shut up" she said aloud to herself. "There's no point in beating myself up over this."

She paused briefly as her eyes found her way to Ikaris' tomb and fresh wave sadness hit her.

"At least they didn't die in vain. All those bastard Deviants are gone now...we won"

She said aloud to the wind with a voice lacking any enthusiasm or conviction.

She eventually sat down silently on the dirty ground and stared transfixed at nothing in particular. Her mind buzzed with a seemingly endless deluge of questions most prominent of which was "What will I do know? ". She mulled over this question for a while. And as time passed and the noon day sun, began to sink. She began to toy with the idea of helping the humans on a more permanent bases. Ikaris had always frowned at her fondness and philanthropic acts directed at humans. Saying that it was against they're main mission and might cloud her judgement. But with their primary mission of wiping out the deviants complete, did it really matter if she stayed and helped the humans or not?. She pondered this for a moment and decided resolutely that, this would be her new mission. In honour of her comrades. She would help just enough to not upset the natural order of things but she would no longer sit by and do nothing.

Armed with a new sense of direction and purpose in life Sersi got up from ground and rubbed at her sore eyes. She gave one final look at the final resting place of her friends before turning to leave.

Only to immediately turn and come face to face with a deviant.

The shock that followed, left her utterly speechless and her mind reeling After the immediate shock wore off her mind went into overdrive as she desperately tried to make sense of what she was seeing right before her. "Impossible" her brain declared. We killed the last of them. Phastos' confirmed it multiple times that the deviant they had then been about to fight was the last one he could detect on Earth. So this had to be some sort of mistake.

But unfortunately there was no mistaking the massive, slimy skinned monstrosity looming over her as anything other than a deviant. It was eerily quiet not making a single sound or even moving for that matter. It just stood there, watching past Sersi at the graves behind her.

How long had it been here, just watching and waiting? She wondered. Sersi was no warrior but it was still astonishing that she hadn't sensed anything. Her sense of awareness couldn't possibly be that bad. No, there was something definitely off about this deviant.

Not just the fact that it was alive and well in the first place, but also the utter lack of primal bloodlust coming from it.

Deviants were without any exaggeration, mindless monsters, only interested in killing and often doing so for no real reason.

No normal deviant would hesitate to attack another non-deviant creature. Regardless of circumstances. Yet this one wasn't doing a thing.

In fact as Sersi continued to stare at the creature she began to notice how unconventional it looked. It was clearly very humanoid despite it's distinct deviant black coloring with a shimmering multicolored hue and several tentacles sprouting from it's back. It had an almost human face except for the lack of conventional human hair, nose or ears. As well as having four all yellow eyes instead of two.

As if to compound things further, it began to speak in a distinctly masculine voice " I was hoping to wait for you to leave, but you were taking quite sometime to wallow".

"You...you talk?" Sersi managed to stammer out.

"Yes" the deviant said without much emotion almost sounding bored "Yes..., this is also a rather new sensation for me as well".

The deviant began to move, slowly circling Sersi as it paced around her rather casually.

This snapped Sersi out of her awestruck state as she immediately became more defensive. She desperately tried to keep the monster facing her at all times and she extended her arms out into a defensive posture, ready to use her powers at any moment.

The deviant for it's part ignored her obvious anxiety and continued talking.

"I only came here to scavenge the tombs you made" the deviant said indicating at the tomb. Immediately after his gesture a sensation passed over her and the world around her dissolved into something else entirely. Gone was the once pristine and clean mausoleum, and in it's place was piles of rumble and the dessicated drained bodies of all nine of her comrades.

Stunned she could only gape in horror as her confusion intensified.

"You must be quite confused" the creature stated in that irritatingly calm voice. "Don't be, it's really quite simple really"

"Everything you remember broadly up till the completion of this mausoleum is true. Your comrades did die in battle and you did bury them here. Your team did come close to killing me, but in the end I survived.

"As you know, we deviants possess a Lamarckian evolutionary system. Meaning we adopt the traits of things we devour. And during our final battle I had the good fortune of ingesting some of the limbs of of your healer and your illusionist. Not enough to permanently gain their power. But enough to bring me back from the brink of death and grant me a level of higher order thinking"

The creature finally paused as if to give Sersi a chance to ask questions. But when all he was met with was stunned silence, he carried on with his explanation unperturbed.

"It took me time to heal and gather my thoughts, but soon I eventually realized I needed more than just mere scraps of your powers. I needed all of it. So I tracked you down and by proxy them". The creature once again gestured to the desecrated burial site as he uttered the last part of it's speech.

"Using my newly acquired ability I trapped you in an illusion, something that I find is quite easy to maintain when I'm simply exploiting a pre-existing emotion or state of mind. And from there, I unearthed your comrades and feasted. And now it's your turn to be eaten "

The creature concluded his speech with a grin that showed off his inhumanly large mouth and filled with shark like rowed teeth.

A chill went down Sersi spine as she processed all the new information.

"This is bad" she thought nervously to herself. 'If what this creature is saying is true it had the combined might of all the nine other eternals now. She had no chance of defeating it on her own. I need to run, get back on the Domo ship, head to Olympia and alert the eternals of this catastrophe.'

But even as she thought up this plan she was identifying problems with it. For one the deviant clearly wasn't just going to sit back and watch her flee. It had already shown interesting in eating her and taking her powers.

And another problem was that in the months it would take to get back to Olympia by ship, the havoc this creature could cause on Earth would be unfathomable.

She couldn't leave the people of earth to it's mercy. Regardless of whether it acquiring her power was risky . She had made a resolution to protect this place and she would regardless of the personal risk.

She was tired of running and if she had the smallest chance to stop this creature she would.

Gritting her teeth with new found determination, Sersi said with as much confidence and venom as she could muster " You will find that I am not an easy prey, creature. So come at me at your own risk".

With that Sersi slammed both her hands down to the ground quickly transmuting the ground between herself and the deviant into erupting spikes that quickly rushed towards the creature.

The creature chuckled sinisterly as it easily dodged the rapidly approaching spike wave, with the speed stolen from Makkari.

Growling in frustration, Sersi changed her strategy. She summoned a massive pillar of earth to elevate her above ground level and far away from the speeding deviant below.

This only made the the deviant laugh again as it suddenly lifted off the ground and flew quickly towards her with the flight of Ikaris.

Thinking quickly, Sersi allowed the creature to almost reach her before abruptly turning her solid pillar into a liquid adhesive which fell to the ground catching the flying deviant along the way.

Together, they both fell back to ground level but Sersi quickly recovered first and easily disentangled herself from the adhesive with her power . Once free she once again touched the ground, causing several rock projectiles to shoot out from the ground at highspeed towards the Deviant.

The deviant was still struggling with the adhesive liquid from before so it should not have been able to dodge the quickly approaching projectile.

But it too was thinking quickly and it managed to extend four of it's still free tentacles out and point them at the oncoming attack. Then it summoned a set of gold colored energy weapons within each tentacle, so that it could rapidly spin them around to slice and swat at the oncoming projectile.

It manage to fend off all the projectiles Sersi sent it's way. Causing her to cease her fruitless attack and stop to rack her brain for a new plan.

However, the deviant wasn't about to give Sersi time for a reprieve as it quickly de-solved the energy blades and began to fire off energy bolts from the tips of his tentacles an ability stolen from Kingo.

Cursing beneath her breathe Sersi hastily erected a earth wall to duck behind the retaliatory fire. She desperately tried to gather her breathe and think.

So far the creature truly did seem to have all their abilities, but she had noticed that it never used all the abilities in tandem or even just two simultaneously. It appeared to be limited to one ability at a time. Which implied that anytime he wasn't using Ajak's healing power at that moment, he was susceptible to being killed.

So Sersi concluded that she needed to attack him now and thoroughly end him before he could switch over to Ajak's ability.

She forced herself to take in some more calming breathes. She was already beyond tired with all the energy she had expelled fighting so far, but she needed to muster one more massive attack. Something, so thoroughly destructive and fast that the deviant would have no time to react.

As she hid behind her only form of protection, which it self was rapidly crumbling under the weight of the ceaseless barrage from the deviant, she dug deep within herself calling upon more power than she had ever called upon in one go.

Almost immediately the earth began to shake. The deviant sensing something was off ceased fire and looked around nervously. "What are you doing witch" sneered the deviant in suspicion finally dropping the facade of cool indifference.

Sersi ignored it and just focused harder on what she was doing. She closed her eyes imagining the elements she needed meshing and colliding. Pulling and pushing. Doing what would naturally take year's to occur in a matter of minutes or seconds.

The tremors grew even more intense, prompting the deviant to panic and refocus on escaping the adhesive gunk still entrapping him. It fruitlessly tried different Eternals' abilities but none were quite suited for freeing him. Maybe if it had more time it could have escaped but it didn't. Sersi's latest handiwork was almost complete and the deviant finally realized what was going on.

"Are you insane woman" it screeched. You do this and you'll not only kill yourself and I, but whatever human settlement exists in 300 mile radius". He bellowed in frustration.

A random thought crossed Sersi's mind about how it could possibly have deduced that, till she realized it was probably tapping into to the intellect of Phastos.

"Don't worry creature, I'm making sure this only takes out the two of us".

As if to prove her point a massive cocoon of latticed clear matter began to erupt out from the earth and begin to surround the two of them as well as about 200 feet above and beside them.

The Phastos empowered Deviant recognized some of the shimmering elements within the cocoon to be diamonds and other extremely durable carbons. Meaning this would be a very difficult barrier to break through even with the strength of Gilgamesh

Below them the tremors reached a breaking point causing the earth beneath them to explode outwards and magma and lava to spew out.

Sersi's plan was working. In this short amount of time, She had managed to rapidly convert the small hill in the middle of no where, a place with no nearby major lava vein, fault line or tectonic plate into an active volcano.

Even if the deviant switched over to Ajak's power now the ensuing volcanic explosion would rip it to pieces and the lava would melt it down to nothingness, undoubtedly thoroughly killing him.

And now even if it managed to escape the adhesive it would now need to burst through the hyper durable carbon dome above them. He could still try and kill Sersi in the hopes of stopping the eruption but the volcano was too far along now to be stopped even if she perished.

This would be the end of him and her...unless.

Another sinister grin split across the deviants face, it quickly cycled through it's newly acquired abilities until it found the one it wanted, nay, the one it needed.

Sersi was so caught up in her volcano creation she almost couldn't tell when her body stated moving on it's own accord. She only realized what was going on until after she had stepped out of from behind the safety provided by her barrier and made the short walk over to deviant.

"Whose ability was it using to do this?", she wondered briefly before realization dawned on her. Druig.

His telepathy was always underrated/ignored . And in theory if the deviant had started off this fight with it from the jump, she would have never stood a chance.

She had never experienced this side of Druig's ability directed at her before and thus had no means of countering it.

For all his problems Druig knew not to do such a thing to a fellow Eternal. So it was quite surreal feeling for her body move without her consent with her mind unable to do nothing more than weakly protest it all.

She couldn't command her mouth to speak her words audibly but she knew the creature could probably still hear her thought.

"Killing me won't stop anything." She said." The process is too far along and not even I could stop this if I wanted to"

The deviant seemingly ignored her internal remarks and instead compelled Sersi to free him from her adhesive creation. Begrudgingly she did so. The deviant then reached over to laid it's hands upon her.

She immediately felt her power being drained by the creature alongside her life force. She gasped and choked in pain but couldn't do much else, as she was still under it's thrall. As her power left her and into the deviant, it began to transform. It's form become more lanky but distinctly more humanoid. It's tendrils retreated into itself and it's four eyes merged into two large all white eyes. It was more like a living shadow now than a deviant or an eternal.

As the last vestiges of power left Sersi and her life force with it, the deviant reached out it's palm to touch the dome keeping it in, easily melting a hole in it with it's newly acquired power from Sersi.

"No..." whispered Sersi weakly as the deviant stepped away escaping from the rapidly rising lava and by proxy certain death.

"That was a thrilling hunt" the deviant declared "You showed me how useful your power could be. To thank you for all that, I grant you what you always wanted. A truly unique burial for you and your deceased brethren".

With that, the deviant callously tossed Sersi back into the erupting volcano. She landed on a ledge overlooking a massive pool of lava that was spitting and boiling. Conveniently laying motionless beside her, not far from her was the body of Ikaris. Too weak to do much else and knowing this was it, she crawled weakly towards her beloved and cradled him in her arms.

She should have run. The spiteful inner voice voice from before screeched. She only made the bastard stronger by dying to it.

"I probably would have been caught regardless of if I run" she weakly said to herself.

"At least now I can die knowing I tried".

She pulled away briefly to stare back at deviant outside the hole the hole he had created.

"Someone will stop you" she assured the creature.

The creature sneered, before suddenly floating off the ground and it's large pupil-less eyes ignited with gold colored cosmic energy.

"Let them try" he declared before sadistically blasting Sersi with the power of her deceased lover.

Deciding that waiting for the eruption to end her was too merciful.

Sure that the last Eternal was dead, the deviant then touched the dome containing the volcano and used Sersi's power to bring it down.

It fell almost immediately, and with it gone, ensuring thousands would die in it's wake.

He looked up at sky. The fight with Sersi had taken place through at the night and it was dawn now.

So begins a new day. And a new era even

A new era of Deviant supremacy.