I do not own GotG.
This story is made for entertainment purposes only.
Title is from 'Like a Stone' by Audioslave
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Chapter 10: Like a Stone
Ego brought Peter down a new path through the endless gardens. This one wound its way down to a large open court. The floor was a faded sea-foam marble that his boots made soft scuffing sounds against, and the edges tapered up like an absurdly shallow Colosseum until they blended back into the strange plant-life around them. Out here, the decorously arranged flowers and hedges of the upper gardens had morphed into a wilder landscape of trees and bushes. Peter knew if he went out far enough in the other direction, he would find the desert that Gamora had wandered off into the first time, the place where Nebula had come crashing down in, and the caves that led to the mass grave of all of his countless half-siblings.
"Have you tried to access the light since coming to this universe?" Ego asked him as they approached the center of the court.
"No, not really." Peter had his hands shoved in his pockets as he followed along.
Ego stopped and turned to face him when they reached the center. "Probably for the best," he hummed. "You have more power than you do control, and not much of either, so even if you did manage to summon something so far away from my core, you're more dangerous to those around you than useful right now."
"Didn't know you cared about the safety of others so much."
"Make no mistake, Peter, I couldn't care less about these mortal parasites of yours. Whether it takes a matter of days or a hundred years, they will all be dead, and you will live on. I have waited countless millennia to not be alone in this universe. A few centuries won't matter much now."
Peter narrowed his eyes at the celestial before him.
"You weren't feeling this patient the last time we met. Why the sudden Ghandi act?"
The wrinkles on Ego's forehead deepened at Peter's reference, but after a moment he must have decided he simply didn't care and brushed it off.
"Do you know what happens to a Celestial when they die?" Ego asked.
"What?" That wasn't quite the answer Peter had expected.
"We draw our powers, our life force, our very sense of being from what could be considered another plane of existence. The Light has existed since long before this universe burst to life, and it will exist long after Entropy has pulled the last thread that holds this reality together. It is what makes us immortal. The reason time does not touch us, and why the stones, other vestiges of existence before... existence, can interact with our powers, rather than consume it. We are made from the same stuff, and the power within them recognizes its own.
"My core is like a doorway to this alternate plane that allows the Light to shine through into this universe, and my consciousness here exists as a projection of that Light. That Light shines on you, too, and grants you your powers and immortality through me. When you destroyed my core, you shut that door."
"...And trapped you on the other side?" Peter hazarded slowly.
"Yes." Ego's eyes had a strange misty quality to them as though he was looking into this other plane of existence as he spoke.
"What was there?" Peter breathed.
Ego suddenly shook himself and returned his attention to the immediate reality around him.
"Not much." His usual arrogant drawl had returned, and again Peter had the sense he was hiding something. "The last of the Celestials before me died eons ago. Whatever individuality they may have once possessed has long since been consumed."
"Wait, you said that when you died, this door or whatever shut. But I thought my connection to the Light was why I remembered things the others didn't?"
"Something like you has never existed before. It seems the rules where you are involved get a little blurry. When the door shut, your connection to me was like a little piece of rubble caught in the jam, wedging it open, and a tiny sliver of light must have still been leaking through. Enough to hold you together and anchor you in place even as the reality around you was torn apart and sewn back together.
"When Thanos unraveled the last universe and rewrote the time stream, he flung the door back open and I was able to step back through. Like you, my memories returned to my body here when the new universe settled into place around it, and here I am." Ego spread his arms out as he grinned at Peter.
"And we're just so happy to have you," Peter grumbled, stifling a yawn.
"You will be," Ego promised. "In time."
"Can we just get on with it?" Peter snapped, growing increasingly uncomfortable with Ego's dark optimism
"Of course." Ego raised his arm and from the seafoam court beside him a bubble of light bloomed forth, twisting and contorting before settling back down into the shape of the celestial himself. A much larger stone likeness stood in the court now, hands held proudly on his hips and clothes frozen as though rippling in some imaginary breeze. "Let's begin with something simple."
"Simple?" Peter asked dubiously.
"Stone is the easiest element to begin with. Not as volatile as some of the others, and you're not ready for anything as finicky as a plant."
"Great, so... How do I do this exactly?" He had made things before, during his battle with Ego's core, but his memories of that time were tinted and blurred through emotion, and he couldn't really recall how he'd done it.
"Begin by summoning the Light," Ego instructed. "You won't have enough to make something this large yet, so just summon as much as you can."
Peter frowned down at his hands. They felt clumsy and hampered by the bandages wrapped around them. He'd done this before. He could do it again. As he focused on recalling the feeling of the Light dancing between his palms, tiny tendrils of bluish light, like a miniature lightning storm, began to take form. It was just like the last time he had been here, and he had made the ball that he and Ego had tossed around the court. A spark of anger flared up at the memory, and the ball of light forming between his fingers crackled and burst outward in a small but violent explosion.
"OUCH!" he yelped, shaking his hands and patting his clothes and hair to make sure nothing had caught fire.
Ego narrowed his eyes and frowned at Peter's failure. "Try again," he ordered. "Focus on your goal."
Peter took a deep breath through his nose and out through his mouth and raised his hands back up.
After several breaths, the lightning began to flicker back into existence and form into a ball in his hands. When the ball had reached the size of a softball he glanced up at Ego to see what he should do next, but Ego said nothing. He was watching the ball of light with silent intensity and Peter took this as prompting to continue drawing on the energy within. When the ball had reached the size of a cantaloupe, at least what Peter remembered a cantaloupe being, he was panting hard and struggling to maintain the shape. This time when Peter looked up Ego met his eyes, but rather than give him any help, he raised his eyebrows as if to say 'that's it?' Another wave of unpleasant emotion washed over Peter and the bubble in his hands again burst like an overinflated balloon. The blast was enough to rock Peter back a step.
Ego let out a deep sigh as Peter recovered his feet.
"Again," he said. "You'll need more than that to create anything worthwhile."
Peter couldn't help the scowl as he recovered his breath and started again. Do it for your friends, he reminded himself. Ego didn't matter. Whatever scheme he was pulling off here, and whatever enjoyment he was getting out of this didn't matter. Peter just needed to stay here long enough to learn to use the Light and then he was gone. The quicker he learned, the quicker this would all be over.
The next time Peter looked up from his work, there was sweat pouring down his face and the ball in his hands was easily the size of a basketball.
Ego studied him for a moment through cold eyes before relenting. "I suppose that will have to do."
Peter didn't have the breath for a sarcastic reply, so he focused on holding the basketball of light together.
"Now focus on what you want it to become," Ego instructed. "Build the image in your mind, then feel it with your hands. It will exist because you will it so."
Peter's eyes were beginning to sting as he stared into the bright light and tried to 'will it so' into a rock. For a moment it seemed to be working. The burning orb shrank and condensed and somehow grew heavier in Peter's hands, even though he wasn't actually touching it.
"Aha!" Peter gasped in elation.
The orb in his hands immediately rippled and shuddered and for a third time blew apart in his arms. This time, at least, Peter thought to shield his face and brace himself so the blow didn't strike him down.
"RRRRRRRRGH!" Peter grunted in frustration, glaring at his empty hands that stung like they'd been slapped. "D'ast it! Why does that keep happening?"
Ego gave a small roll of his eyes. "The Light is nothing more than an extension of yourself. It will be shaped and molded according to your will. If you are distracted, or your will is weak, you will lose control. Try again."
Ego and Peter spent the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon in the seafoam court. The sun had crept past the center of the sky and begun its slow descent when Ego finally announced a break and Peter collapsed to his knees. Small, disfigured clumps of dirt and stone littered the ground at his feet. They ranged in size from pebbles to hunks as large as his fist. Some were solid and unyielding to the touch, while others were already crumbling apart. All were equally hideous and formless.
"I think that's plenty for now," the celestial said, kicking several stones out of the way as he approached to stand over Peter. "I believe Mantis and most of your friends are reconvening for lunch. Why don't you join them for now? The Nova Corps should be hailing us soon. I'll come back for you then and we can pick up where we left off."
Peter struggled back to his feet. "Okay," he grunted.
-x-
As Ego had predicted, Peter found most of his team in the same greenhouse dining room he had left them in.
Drax was the first one to notice his entrance and called out a loud greeting.
"Peter! How did it go?"
"Fine," Peter groaned as he shuffled towards the nearest chair and flopped into it. "I think. I stopped trying to blow myself up, so that's good, right?"
Drax grabbed the empty plate from in front of Peter and began filling it with food. "I know nothing of this Light, but I would assume so."
Peter accepted the full plate with gratitude and began shoveling food down like a starving person. A few moments later Gamora placed a cup filled with water down in front of him as well and he chugged half of it down before thanking her.
"How long do you think it will take you to learn?" Gamora asked from where she was leaning against the table and watching him eat.
"A while," Peter sighed into his plate. "But don't worry. We'll get your parents back, I promise. I'm just taking a quick break, Ego wants to work on this some more later..."
"You are exhausted," Drax pointed out. "You should return to your room and rest until then."
"I'm fine," Peter protested.
"I am groot," Groot said, pointing one finger accusingly at Peter's plate.
Peter blinked in confusion at the food that suddenly seemed much closer than he remembered it. "I am not falling asleep in my food," he lied, straightening up and ignoring the disbelieving looks pointed squarely at him.
"I will escort you back to your room, if you are worried you cannot make it on your own," Drax offered. Peter squinted at him, but couldn't quite tell if Drax was being serious or making fun of him.
"No thanks. I think I can make it. Are you sure you guys will be okay if I leave you again?"
"We will be fine," Drax answered. "The bug lady has been showing us around and displaying some of her powers. It has been quite entertaining."
Behind him, Mantis looked positively ecstatic over the small praise.
Peter finished off his plate and the rest of his water and excused himself. The walk back to the rooms they were staying in felt much longer than it had this morning. Just a short nap, he promised himself as he dragged his feet up the steps. He would take a short nap and then go join his friends before Ego came back for him. He was already feeling a little better after eating, so he was sure he didn't need much sleep.
Peter shut his eyes against a huge yawn that made his jaw ache as he shoved the door to his room open and collapsed face-first into his bed.
"That's disgusting," a voice broke into the silence. "At least take the boots off before you ruin the bedding."
"GODDAMNIT!" Peter screamed, rolling over to fling a pillow as hard as he could at the source of his latest heart attack.
Nebula was in his room, leaning with her hip against the frame of his open window. She had a half-eaten plate of food balanced in one hand and something that looked suspiciously like a fork from Earth in the other. She didn't so much as blink as the poorly aimed pillow bounced harmlessly off her knees.
"What are you doing here, Nebula?" he asked crossly. "This is my room."
"The window was open." She shrugged.
"That's not an invitation."
"You went into my room."
"What?"
"You forgot to close the door again when you left," she told him as she took another bite of her food. "I know it was you. None of the others are that nosy or that stupid."
"Fine," Peter huffed. "I'm sorry I was worried about you, okay? I'd say it won't happen again, but we both know that'd be a lie."
Nebula opened her mouth, but apparently had no reply for that because after a moment of hesitation she, predictably, changed the subject. "The caves are gone," she supplied instead. "The ones that lead down to his core."
"Gone? Are you sure you looked in the right place."
"I looked where you claimed they would be, and several other places. I spent most of the night traveling the perimeter of these gardens and buildings, but I never found anything like what you described. He must have buried them."
"Well," Peter sighed as he began working off his boots. "I mean, I can't really say I'm surprised he did it. I'm sure whatever defense measures the Nova Corps have planned are assuming he'd be hiding it."
"I'm sure."
"Is that what you were doing all night? Snooping? You could have told someone instead of just vanishing."
"I don't have to report to you," Nebula said, tilting her head to stare down her nose at him.
"No, you don't, but it might keep me from barging into your room in the future." Peter got both feet free and tossed his boots into the corner by the door. "We're a team now. You don't have to hide stuff from us, and if you get into trouble, it'd be nice to know where to start looking."
Nebula wrinkled her nose at that. "I am perfectly capable of working on my own. I don't need to be rescued."
"It's a luxury you're going to have to accept eventually," Peter managed to get out around another sizable yawn. "I was a solo outlaw before the Guardians, you know, but it's nice having someone to watch your back. You'll get used to it."
"You mean dependent on it?" Nebula asked, but there was the trace of a smile to her lips, and Peter was pretty confident she was just teasing him right now.
"You know I don't." Peter tactfully ignored the fact that he had wondered just that when first coming to this new universe and finding himself suddenly so alone. "Now can you please leave? I can barely stand up, and don't know how long I have until Ego puts me back to work. A nap might help."
"It certainly can't hurt." Nebula placed the thing that looked suspiciously like a fork from Earth onto her plate with a little clink and pulled something out from one of the small leather pockets on her belt. She held the item up to inspect it with a frown and rolled it around in her hand a few times before tossing it onto Peter's bed as she passed towards the door. "This is just awful."
Curious, Peter picked up the item only to discover it was one of his failed stone creations. The lumpy, burbling wad sat heavy in his hand and seemed to mock him as it left little streaks of grey dust on his palm.
"Were you watching us?" Peter asked, but when he looked up she had already vanished into the open hallway. "Y'know there's a fine line between mysterious and creepy, and you're beginning to cross it!" Peter yelled after her before settling the stone onto a nearby table and flopping back onto his bed. He didn't bother with the blankets, just drug a pillow across his face to block out the daylight and tried to forget about the morning's events.
-x-
"Peter."
Peter gasped and shot upright, but when he looked around he found himself in his room on Ego's planet. Daylight streamed through his open window, and no colorful galaxies were in sight.
"Peter, it is time to get up!" Mantis's cheery voice rang through the door, punctuated by several small knocks. "Ego sais that you have a call to take."
As soon as he had shoved his boots back on, Mantis led him back towards the towering central cathedral. Inside, Ego was waiting for them, standing under a gigantic screen which featured the Nova Prime Saal's frowning face.
"There he is now," Ego said, gesturing at Peter as he and Mantis drew close. "As you can see, he is doing quite well here."
Peter shot a flat look at the back of Ego's head at his bragging tone before addressing the screen. "Hey Saal. We're all still alive down here. How are things up there?"
"Star-lord." Saal's frown relaxed a touch when he spotted Peter. "Are your companions doing well and remaining under control?"
"Uhhhh, yes. Very well, and very, very, under control." If one counted Rocket running wild and free who-knows-where, and Nebula refusing to stick around for more than a passing second as 'under control.' "Everything's great. They're just, uh, busy right now." Actually he had no clue where any of them were at the moment if Mantis was with him and Ego.
"Good. Things are largely unchanged on our end. We will continue to monitor your activity, and send another hail at the same time tomorrow."
"We can't wait," Ego grinned, and the screen winked out of existence. His too-bright smile dropped from his face as soon as Saal vanished and he turned back towards Peter. "Good, you're awake, are you ready to continue?"
"Where are my friends?" Peter couldn't help but ask.
Ego paused for a moment, tilting his head as though listening to something far away. "The brute and the green woman are watching the tree play in a fountain, the angry one is asleep in a tree outside of the gardens, and the monkey is ripping apart my ship."
Peter had known Ego was aware of everything on his planet's surface, but actually seeing him use the powers, and the revelation of how efficiently he could locate everyone, was a bit disturbing. Ego must have misconstrued Peter's worried surprise, however, as he let out a chuckle.
"Relax. There's nothing he can do with the pieces."
"I know," Peter snapped. "And you know their names, why don't you use them?"
"I see no reason to," Ego said. "Why waste the time learning the names of every bug that crosses my path?"
"Never mind, let's just get back to work."
Ego and Peter left Mantis behind and returned to the seafoam court together.
"Gather as much Light as you can.," Ego instructed as he led the way back to the center of the open space. The failed experiments from earlier were nowhere to be seen, and Peter tried to put them from his mind as well. "Let's see if your rest has revealed any improvement."
Peter took a deep breath and began focusing on the feeling of pulling the Light into existence, and was surprised at how much easier it came to him compared to that morning. By the time he had summoned enough to match the size of a basketball again, he was beginning to sweat, but felt like he could push it for more.
"Don't make it any bigger," Ego's voice cost Peter some focus and the ball wavered, but it didn't burst. "Make it denser."
Peter had no clue how to make a ball of light more dense, but he brushed the mutinous thoughts aside before they could distract him and cause another explosion. As he continued to weave light into the orb, he tried to keep it from growing any larger. A strange whine began thrumming through the air and made his blood tingle as the ball wriggled and writhed between his palms.
"Control the Light, Peter," Ego was pacing in circles around Peter as he watched his new struggle. "It's beginning to fray around the edges. If you do not give it proper instruction, it will run wild."
Peter continued to press as much energy as he could into the ball in his hands. Before much longer he felt like he was trying to hold back a flood with his bare hands.
"This is better," Ego hummed, pausing in his slow circles to study Peter's work. "You might be able to make something useful someday. Let's begin working on some finer control now. Try to mold it into something like this." With a flick of his wrist a ball of light flickered to life in Ego's palm and quickly cooled into a polished crystal orb.
Afternoon passed into evening, and Peter hadn't achieved his goal yet, but he was getting closer. His creations were beginning to form into something resembling an orb instead of the wildly unpredictable shapes of before. They no longer crumbled away at his touch, and the stone had taken on a smoother, semi-transparent quality.
He was feeling pretty pleased with himself by the time shadows had begun claiming the court and the air began to cool back down. He was rolling an egg-shaped rock twice the size of his fist between his hands. It was still too foggy to see through with any clarity, but he could make out the shadows of his fingers dancing through it as he passed it back and forth between his palms.
"This is enough for tonight," Ego's voice broke into Peter's admiration of his own work. "You are beginning to summon less Light every time. Get some rest, and tomorrow we will begin working with a more difficult element."
"When am I going to learn to do cool stuff like Cosmo?" Peter asked, glancing up from the heavy crystal egg. Summoning rocks wasn't exactly exciting, and it wouldn't do much to help him in any real way. What was he going to do with a bunch of crystal eggs? Throw them at Thanos's head if they ever met?
Ego's brows scrunched together and he tipped his head in confusion. "Cool stuff?" he asked.
"You know, like, psychic blasts, and mind reading, and moving stuff with my mind." Peter pointed an arm out and wiggled his fingers for emphasis. "Like Cosmo?"
The celestial threw his head back in a loud burst of laughter.
"What?" Peter asked loudly.
"Never, Peter," Ego laughed out. "That's not the kind of celestial you are."
"There are different kinds of celestial?"
Ego's laughter died down to amused chuckling. "There are so many things you don't know about yourself," he said. "Things I could have taught you long ago if Udonta hadn't failed to follow through with our deal."
He swept his arm in a wide arc, and tendrils of light burst from the ground beside him, twisting together and taking the form of a great screen held up on an extravagant podium. "In the beginning, when the universe was empty, and devoid of life, the Celestials were the first creatures to take form on the mortal plain. They were tasked to become the architects of creation. They built the galaxies and gave root to the lives that would eventually spread like weeds across the cosmos." The black screen became peppered with little white dots as planets and stars took form in the nothing. "To achieve this, there were three kinds of Celestial."
Over the dots came the image of a glowing white humanoid shape. The featureless man had his hands held up in front of his chest, hovering over a circular shape in a pose that strongly resembled what Peter had been doing all day. "The first of these, were the Builders of the Physical World. They created planets and stars, designed systems that could support life and filled the empty universe with beauty." The image of the celestial spread his hands and the orb became a swirling system of planets and stars.
"Next, came the Bringers of Life." Ego waved his arm again and the first celestial vanished, replaced with a new one. This one still had a planet hovering before its chest, but its hands were cupped together under its chin, a small ball of light held within them. "These brought with them the first seeds of life and sprinkled them across the lifeless creations of the Builders and often guided them into forms resembling our own kind." The celestial leaned forward as though to blow on the ball of light and it burst apart, chunks of light sprinkled across the planet's surface where they morphed into the shapes of all manner of creatures. People and animals sprouted like eager plants from the sparkling seeds.
"Finally, came the Givers." This celestial vanished as well, and the new image resolved into the shape of a smaller celestial kneeling down in front of an assortment of creatures. This Celestial held a ball of light in their palm as well, but crushed it in their fist and tossed the shards onto the crowd below. Wherever they struck, the people and animals began to glow, as though imbued with Light themselves. "These were the rarest of our kind, but they possessed the ability to gift mortals with special traits and powers."
The image zoomed in, and Peter could see a large uniform group of humanoids, all glowing. "Sometimes they would gift entire races, weaving the Light into their DNA, so that it could be passed down from generation to generation." The group of humans waved their arms and a chunk of the stylized ground they stood upon raised obediently. "Mantis comes from such a line. Her people were gifted with emphatic abilities that have remained strong in their blood for all these millennia." The glow faded from all but one of the crowd of people, and all the light-less ones clumped together to face the last glowing member. In fear or in revelation, Peter couldn't tell. "Sometimes, these gifts would occur in individuals instead. That dog of yours, I believe, has been gifted, in an odd sort of way. It is rare that a beast be granted such extreme powers, but not impossible."
"Cosmo said he drank from the celestial head of Knowhere," Peter said. Did the head that made up the city of Knowhere once belong to one of these 'Givers,' he wondered.
Ego hummed, bringing a hand up to tug at the hair on his chin again. "Strange, that he wasn't overwhelmed and devoured by the Light, but instead managed to internalize and wield it," he murmured. "But, again, I suppose it's not impossible."
"And we are-?" Peter prompted, pretty sure he knew already.
"I," Ego waved his arm again and the screen returned to the image of the first celestial, planet nestled safely in its hands. "Am a Builder, or what was once known as an 'elemental.' As my son, you are this as well. We can control the physical universe around us, and bring into creation physical things as we see fit. But we cannot create intelligent life, and we cannot perform telepathic talents such as your dog. The universe was only created through the combined efforts of these three lines. Celestials were never meant to be alone."
Peter glanced at Ego who was staring at the screen now as well, and was surprised to find a shadow of pain in his father's eyes. Before Peter could decide what, if anything, to do with this realization, Ego blinked and it was gone.
Again, Peter wondered what Ego had found when he had been locked inside of the Light.
End
Chapter 11 Preview: "...If you are planning to take her with us, she will need to know how to defend herself, at least," Gamora narrowed her eyes at him like he was an idiot. "You can't take someone with no real experience into battle against my father. She'll be dead in an instant..."
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This one is very late, and the next one will probably be just as late as well. The good news is I almost have chapter two of Tenebris (My working title for the Earth book) finished, and I've begun the rehaul of Astronautical. I'm just updated and fixing stuff like my dialogue tags and making sure I wrote 'star-lord' instead of the many other ways I miswrote it in the beginning before someone was nice enough to let me know which one was correct. That sort of stuff. So no one needs to re-read anything. I just wanted to get all those little things fixed before I posted Tenebris. Then I can finally add up the epilogue/chapter 22 of the first book Astronautical and list it as complete and that won't be breathing down my neck anymore.
The Ego arc is a big info dump arc, and begins to draw the story into the surrounding universe a little more. Here we get the first one, the reveal that there are different 'kinds' of celestials. In the comics, Peter's father isn't a celestial, he's the king of a race of aliens, and has elemental powers, and Ego is a living planet with no relation to either Peter or celestials(He's a villian for the Fantastic 4, I think?), so there was a lot of room to interpret things in the MCU. I decided on this three part system because it can be used to tie up a lot of loose threads in the storyline after the next couple of major plot reveals in the upcoming chapters, and can begin linking this storyline into the broader picture. And, selfishly, because it always bugs me in stories involving hundreds of alien races when every last one of them is extremely human in appearance. I get for obvious budget reasons that the MCU wouldn't want to waste money and resources on including unnecessarily dramatic races, but, since I obviously have no such concerns for this project, having the celestials using themselves as a sort of template for life, I can make a personal peace with the fact that so many thousands of alien races are structurally so similar.
lol, personal agendas aside, I think once the next couple of 'aha' moments are met, things will start tying together nicely and the Guardians can begin returning to the main plot with a clearer picture of what's going on here and get some sorely needed answers.
Thank you everyone for your continued patience and support!
Your beautiful comments always make my day and keep me smiling.
Keranovi: Thank you for pointing that out! Since I have an idea of what's happening in the scenes before I write it down, sometimes I forget to make sure things are clear in moments like that for a fresh reader. I went back and tried to make it a little more clear that Groot and Gamora returned to their rooms but Drax stayed behind.
-OMaM