A/N
On with the show.
Disclaimer: I am a simple man. I own the shirt on my back, and a fantastic recipe for a PB . I, however, do not own Marvel.
Odin's words bounced around in Nathan's head like a cat that had just been spooked from his house fucking exploding. Eternity? The literal embodiment of all life in the universe? The personification of Time? The bronze metal of omnipotence in all of Marvel? That was the being that brought him here?
Why?
Nathan sat on a weirdly comfortable log by Hestia's campfire, contemplating every aspect of his existence while staring into the fire. Every lick of flame brought a new thought, with every ember, a new rabbit hole for his mind to follow.
Eternity was one of those beings that kept his hands very far from the pot, as far as Nathan knew. He only ever acted under extenuating circumstances, and just let the universe continue along its course. So why bring him here? What sort of thing could warrant reaching across the multiverse to steal the soul of a random mortal, and plop him into the body of a human-Celestial hybrid? How did he even accomplish that, anyway? Nathan was almost positive that Eternity was not a multiversal deity. His powers should be limited to this universe, so he had to have gotten some help, right?
"Cousin. Stop brooding. It's unbecoming." A voice spoke up from beside him on the log.
At some point, Hestia had sat down next to him and started poking at the fire with her hands - moving logs slightly, and goading the dwindling embers with small gestures. Nathan had made a note of it, but otherwise had continued with his existential crisis - that is until she interrupted it.
Rude.
"What's with that, by the way?" The godling blinked at her. "You've been saying we're family, but if anything it should be closer to Ahsonnutli and the Navajo, right?"
The goddess huffed, still peering into the fire with a critical look - dissecting it in her mind and measuring how long it would take to burn through its fuel. "You may have been born in the heart of America, but you will find that territory on the physical plane does not mean all that much to gods."
"Well that's just categorically false." Every ancient historical text that he had read over the years flipped through his head. Books within his mental library flipped open to highlighted verses, stone tablets and scrolls floated around him with glowing lines of chiseled and painted stanzas. Ancient songs plucked on their original instruments, and hymns of priestly devotion filled the air of his mind palace. There were thousands of examples of gods throughout the ages claiming cities, presiding over wars, and demanding local tribute.
In Greece alone there was Ares, favoring the Spartans. Hera, with Troy. Athena, with Athens, and many more besides.
Hestia looked over at him with a half-lidded stare, and a small smile - like he was a child that just argued the sky was blue because the government aerosolized food dye into it regularly. "You are still looking through the eyes of a mortal, cousin." She pulled her hand back from the fire, and turned to him fully - somehow retaining a graceful posture on the log they shared.
"You have not yet understood your new bearing on the world around you. While yes, many of us have favored places on Gaia, devoted followers and temples - we are not limited by borders set by mortal means." The goddess shifted slightly - not in any visible, or conventionally perceivable way, but within his new conceptual senses. Her form seemed to vibrate. The edges of the Hearth blurred. The frequency of Home's amplitude increased.
It felt… harmonic.
"That is my domain, cousin." She smiled at him. "Family."
"Okay." Nathan said, rather dumbly. He could tell that she was right. As the goddess projected her domain, he felt the connection. Some inherent aspect of his being was linked to some inherent aspect of her's. Like two wildly different songs that ran on the same tempo.
"But why, though?"
She chuckled at him. "When a mortal ascends, the universe tends to just go with the theme. How that translates with Eternity's hand in it, I am unsure, but you decidedly fit into the Olympian pantheon."
"Oh come on!" Alice spoke up from his kimoyo bracelet. Nathan noticed that his daughter tended to stay quiet most of the time. She seemed to prefer listening over taking an active role in most conversation. He wasn't sure if that was due to lacking experience, or if the cute little AI was an introvert, but he really appreciated it when she spoke up. It tended to break whatever funk he kept digging himself into.
Which might have been the point, now that he thought about it. His daughter was awesome.
The godling blinked and smiled smugly down at her. "Told you there was a theme!"
"Just because the 'universe,'" she said with holographic air quotes, "agrees with you, does not mean you were right. That whole thing was a mess, and you know it."
"You must be Alice, then?" Nathan looked up to see that Hestia's gaze had shifted down to Alice's petulant little form.
His daughter smiled back happily, and waved - her little, digital dress swaying with the motion. "Hello aunt Hestia!"
With three words, Alice had shattered the goddess. Nathan watched as her calm crumbled, replaced by an expression he would have expected to see on a small child, holding a kitten for the first time. "You are immediately my favorite." She said, a true smile forming on her lips.
Nathan sat back and let the two talk for a bit. Alice had a lot of questions about historical inaccuracies that the goddess had been present for, and Hestia was gleefully answering everything. He would have called it gossip, if it wasn't mostly academic, and he was left without much place to interject.
That was fine though. It gave him time to look around the camp that Hestia had set up, and finally take in what had been happening since his little revelation.
The majority of the Asgardian soldiers were still in their lines, standing at attention and ready for the call of their king - though a few of the higher ranks were sitting around the campfire with a bowl of soup that Hestia had probably conjured. One of which was Sif, who looked decidedly out of place as the only female asgardian present. She had obviously come expecting a fight - called upon by her king on short notice - only to be sat around a fire with a bowl of soup.
She looked to be enjoying it, regardless. Hestia probably made the best soup. Nathan would have to get a bowl before this wrapped up.
The Ancient One and Odin stood on the opposite side of the fire from where he sat, speaking quietly - though not secretively. They looked like two people might as they put together a puzzle. Contemplative frowns, and distant looks as they brought up points that Nathan couldn't hear over the crackling campfire.
Ahsonnutli sat on a stump just a few feet from his log, Starsplitter still in hand like it held a mystery that she just couldn't figure out. Her features changed continuously, as if a new set of eyes, ears, and nose might offer some new perspective on the problem.
The Changing Woman had been the most reserved of his guests by far. She had yet to say a single word - didn't interject much more than a broadcasted emotion into any conversation - yet her presence was anything but ignored. Her own bowl of soup had been emptied cleanly, showing respect for Hestia's hospitality (shouldn't he be doing this? They were his guests. He was slacking) and everyone took care to acknowledge her presence, and respect her silence.
She was here for something, yet she didn't make it known. Which put the Asgardians on guard, but otherwise didn't call attention to it.
In the meantime, he was content to let the goddess examine his freaky ax. The thing seemed to have a mind of its own, if his past few interactions with it told him anything, and the circumstances in which it was made still made him twitch. So he was intent on ignoring it entirely until it became relevant.
That being the case, he only blinked at the goddess when she stood and threw it off into the distance.
Starsplitter turned expertly in the air, blade over hilt in a linear path from Ahsonnutli's hand, directly into a tree on the edge of the clearing. Then into the tree behind it, as the first was erased from existence. Then the tree behind that, as it met the same fate.
It moved silently. There was no ringing sound, or cartoonish 'woosh' that would have otherwise denoted it cutting through the air. No crash, or thunk when it hit the bark of a tree. No audible proof that it had just cut a straight path through the forest.
All the same, everything came to a halt. Conversations stopped. The Asgardians stood and put hands on their weapons. Odin and the Sorcerer Supreme turned to look at the trail of destruction, then to the one who had wrought it.
No one moved aside from that, even Ahsonnutli, who had just frowned in contemplation as she looked towards where she had thrown Starspliter.
"You know," Nathan said blithely, "a squirrel lived in one of those trees." He felt the point where the critter's emotions just… stopped. It was disturbing on a deep level for the godling - in a way that he really didn't expect. Like watching the light leave someone's eyes, but more intimate.
With his new senses, Nathan had a vague knowledge of everything around him. It was disorientating, but beautiful. As mentioned earlier, he could perceive the concepts that made up everything - meaning that when those concepts ceased to conceptualize, when they went quiet, it meant that the creature was just simply gone.
A dead body still held concepts, just as the rocks and trees around him did. The transition from life to death was just a changing of those concepts, and that was an understanding that came to him instantly - like a divine realization. Life and death were part of the cycle, so long as the concepts themselves were preserved - even if they underwent a change.
What his ax had just done was full on deletion, and that was not something that he wanted under his purview as a god.
Nathan was okay with the domain of creation. He had the time and experience with his Celestial energy to really come to terms with the role, so the ascendance itself didn't rock him all that much. However if this role came with the burden of a destroyer? That was absolutely not something that he wanted to be a part of.
Everyone's eyes turned to him as the words left his mouth. The Ancient One's lips tilted down in a concerned, yet thoughtful frown. Odin was entirely blank-faced, but the piercing gleam in his good eye sized him up more thoroughly than before. Hestia though, just sighed and didn't otherwise react.
Ahsonnutli turned to him slowly, and said her first words in this entire ordeal. "You are an anomaly, Nathan Quill." Her words altered ever so slightly mid-word as her vocal chords and mouth shape changed. "A new god of primordial power, born of humanity with identity in question. I worry for Mother Earth."
Odin sighed. "Perhaps I was wrong." He turned to Hestia. "Perhaps it is time for lessons. I will not be leaving until I know where the godling stands."
A/N
This one's a tad bit short, but the next one (up on my pay tre on already) is double the length. Check it out if you so choose. Also my other stuff on there - that too.
Also, if you're interested in a discord server with like, a billion writers and readers, take a gander at this:
discord . gg / elibrary
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