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Hail Thanos - part 3
The Eternals (re-)discovered that they are only immortal because whenever they die they get resurrected at the cost of a mortal's life, human or maybe Deviant. Now our main chars, the Eternals with a conscience, have gone to live with the Deviants to learn how to avoid dying. Meanwhile in their absence Thanos of Titan has succeeded in being elected the new Prime Eternal, after temporarily killing Zuras again. But he knows that the body Phastos made for him has a weakness which the smith has been made to forget. Phastos has gone the the Deviants to try to rediscover that secret. However Thanos also knows that Phastos is also the only 1 who can completely cure him. So he's brought the Oceanic Watch, whose task was always to watch the Deviants and destroy their city Lemuria if they got too dangerous, to fulfil their destiny unless Phastos is handed over to him.Sersi is mentally summoning the other Eternals to the battle. Ikaris leaves off learning defensive fighting with the Deviants Karkas and Ransak. Sprite calls Thena from the arms of her Deviant lover Tolau. Sersi tells Kingo Sunen to guard Phastos while he continues to find a way to kill Thanos. The Oceanic Watch unleash atomic cannons from above - Thanos doesn't care if Phastos is killed because he'll just get resurrected by the Machine. The Deviants fire Eternal-seeking missiles, but more effective is Ikaris punching through the cannons. Sersi and Sprite are fighting against individual Watch members, but whenever Sprite is hit she turns out to be an illusion.Thanos takes a hand personally. He drops down to the surface of Lemuria and demands to know where the Eternals are living. He's pointed towards the sculptor Tolau The Delirious who's holding his latest exhibition nearby. The Titan goes there to see 2 figures - Eternal Thena sculpted out of (the weaker secondary) adamantium and Tolau himself built from perishable meat. He pauses to admire and then critique the work. He fires a blast which melts both statues proving that the intended contrast was false.He doesn't try to force Tolau to betray his lover but merely waits a short while for her to come running. He asks Thena where the smith is, with his hand round the Deviant's throat. Tolau reminds her he's dying of the Excessive Deviancy disease so Thanos killing him would be a mercy. But Thena still directs the Titan truthfully to the cellars beneath the Takarina Express. Of course Thanos prepares to kill Tolau anyway, claiming it will increase the value of his artwork. But on the other hand he doesn't want to get the reputation of being merciful so he leaves the Deviant to his painful fate.Thena mentally tells the others what she has done, rationalising that it will save many Deviant lives. Tolau points out that it hasn't saved him because the big Change has started that will make him Excessively Deviant. And they both know that the Celestials created an unstoppable drive within every Eternal to destroy Excessive Deviation. He begs her to leave him because he doesn't want her to have to kill him and then have to live with the guilt. The Machine tells us that Thena fantasises that she will overcome the drive to kill Tolau and will nurse the monstrous thing he becomes until she can find a cure for him. But she knows deep down that will never happen. Tolau transforms, Thena's hard-wired nature takes over and she rams a sword through his chest. She rationalises that *someone* would have to kill Tolau and it were better someone who loves him.After Thena's warning Kingo drags Phastos away from his science lab before a blast from above destroys it and many Deviants in the area. Phastos can't take any more blood on his head so he plans to surrender to the Titan to buy time for Kingo to continue his work. Of course actor Kingo protests that he can *play* a scientist but he isn't 1. So Phastos leaves a big clue for him and the others. Thanos is an Eternal but he is also somehow a Deviant. Eternals can't give birth to Eternals, so whatever Mentor and Sui-San did to produce him (and Eros) must involve a Deviant element. So they need to investigate the Deviants' deepest secrets.He then steps out into the open and calls down Thanos. The Titan obliges and beats him to death knowing that he will be reborn back in the Exclusion in Olympia. But Thanos still tells the Watch to raze the city. However Druig contacts him from Olympia to point out that such an unnecessary tactic might allow the Eternals to capture 1 of the Watch. And the Watch will prove useful again in the future. So the Titan calls his hounds off and they all leave.Sersi meets up with Deviant Warlord Kro who is taking his people's disaster philosophically. The Oceanic Watch only did what they were designed to do, and we learn that they've done it before. But then Thena joins them with her personal grief. She and Kro have a long history including being lovers, and he commiserates with her. They know that Eternals are coded to 'prevent excess deviation' by killing such Deviants, but now she expresses her intention to do it by finding a preventative cure. Kro warns her that Deviant scientists have spent lifetimes working on the problem, but Thena points out that's as nothing to an Eternal.Ikaris, Kingo and Sprite join the conference. Sersi says they need to use the time Phastos has bought them, while Thanos tries to pry his secrets out of him, to discover how to kill the Titan. Kingo passes on the lead that Thanos is part-Deviant and Phastos thinks the weakness he built in to Thanos' current body is connected to that. So they need to learn more about Deviants, such as *why* the Celestials created them in the 1st place. Kro says their priesthood have theories and Celestial lore but they're unlikely to grant access to Eternals, especially after today. So our Eternals go consult their own priests ...... in Celestia in an Andean valley (which we are now told is a constructed conceptual valley sculpted from a condensed belief matrix). Ajak and Makkari greet them. Ajak reiterates that Eternals can't beget Eternals, and to succeed would require a change, ie a Deviancy, which would be heresy. Makkari is more practical. They can no longer gain Celestial knowledge because their Celestial gods won't talk to them anymore. However they both know that there is a last Celestial on Earth, but Ajak says it is guarded by their greatest foes. Not the Deviants but the blasphemous humans who inhabit the Celestial corpse - the Avengers.


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Hail Thanos - part 2
Our favourite Eternals have discovered that every time 1 of them is resurrected a human or Deviant has to die. So they've gone to Deviant Lemuria to learn how to change their ways (ie stop treating death as just an inconvenience). (Some Eternals already knew about this, and many others just don't care about individual humans.) Meanwhile Druig helped Thanos replace Zuras as Prime Eternal, and the Titan killed him for his pains.In Lemuria we witness 1 of the problems of being Deviants. 1 Deviant has succumbed to the illness known as excess deviation and as apparently usual in this situation wants to eat another Deviant. Ikaris, Kingo Sunen and Phastos come to the rescue, not so much because they are heroes as that as Eternals they are driven to wipe out excess deviation. The would-have-been meal runs away in fright, and Phastos points out that that Deviant knew that if he 'changed' that would be his fate too.He also chides Ikaris for charging in recklessly - he's supposed to avoid possibly getting killed. Ikaris says he doesn't know how to do that, but he flies off to find someone who can teach him. Kingo has been searching for Gilgamesh, the Forgotten One, who now has the guilt from his 'job' of 'temporarily' killing Eternals who deserved it. Phastos is trying to work out how to stop Thanos. (He had a method but Druig removed it from his mind.)Druig awakens in the resurrection chamber in the Exclusion. He can't remember the events that led to his latest death but he figures it had something to do with Thanos who greets him. He does remember that he somehow helped the Titan become Prime Eternal and he guesses that his missing memories contain something Thanos doesn't want him to know (it's the method of defeating Thanos he got from Phastos). Wily Druig accepts his new role as Thanos' servant, planning of course to turn the tables somehow. The Titan's main goal is to fix the defective body Phastos gave him.Back in Lemuria Deviant sculptor Tolau is waiting to unveil his latest work. The Eternal musician Khoryphos and the Deviant artist Yrdisis, a couple for 40 years, try to calm his apprehension. Eternal Thena, Tolau's muse and subject of the statue, contemplates the pair - Khory Eternally youthful and Yrdy now in her old age. Tolau shows his lover Thena that he is exhibiting early signs of the 'change' which began yesterday after Thena's previous lover Warlord Kro visited them.We now get 1 of the Great Machine's digressions, this time on Lemurian gladiatorial combat. Many Deviants are violent. (The Machine supposes this is only natural given that Eternals are always suspecting them of excess deviation.) Even the non-violent enjoy watching gladiators fight. But it waxes and wanes with fashion. Currently it's in disfavour and gladiators now don't fight in arenas and just hope some in the small crowd will spare them some coins. 2 such are Ransak The Reject and his friend Karkas. Karkas is a more-than-typically monstrous Deviant who is really a poet and philosopher, but his great strength means being a gladiator pays better (sometimes). Ransak looks human, which to Deviants is really ugly. He is armed with power rods and a great rage.Now we see them fighting each other to an unsympathetic crowd who shout insults at the Reject. Karkas tells him to ignore them - ugliness is only skin deep and inside he's just as Deviant as them all. Ikaris arrives to talk to them and scares the crowd away. He says he wants to learn how to fight defensively to avoid getting killed. So Ransak punches him in the face, hurting his hand. He expected Ikaris to dodge the blow, but the Eternal doesn't understand the word.In Olympia Druig reports to Thanos that Zuras is restrained in the Exclusion but it can only be temporary. At some point someone will force another vote which the Titan might not win so they must use his period of power to attain his aim. Domo the administrator has been 'promoted' to chief scientist and has been examining the situation. The Titan is only an Eternal by descent (from Mentor and Sui-San) and is not therefore a true original Eternal and was never part of Eternal society, bonded to the Machine. Phastos gave him a partial bond and Domo hopes to complete it. Then they can use the resurrection chamber to give him a new Eternal body without the dodgy artificial heart Phastos provided (to replace the 1 destroyed by Gamora back in Infinity Wars Prime).Domo's machines blast Thanos with staggering energies. It doesn't work but Domo considers lying, hoping that Thanos will then kill himself trying to get resurrected. But Domo's not a risk-taker so he admits it hasn't. He can't even figure out how Phastos got as far as he did, and Thanos won't allow himself to be studied too deeply in case they discover how to activate the fail-safe switch Phastos installed (which is what the smith and Druig have been made to forget). He ends by saying only Phastos can do the job. Thanos commends Domo for his honesty but then kills him for his failure.He then asks Druig how to get Phastos? What forces can they muster? Druig asks him which attributes he seeks in his followers:- numbers, trustworthiness or lack of ethics. He suggests the Titan pick 2 out of 3. Thanos opts for the last 2 and Druig suggests the Oceanic Watch.Time for another of the Great Machine's data dumps. (Remember in the following that this series claims that all 100 true Eternals were created at the start, and all Eternal family structures are actually a fiction.) When brothers Uranos and Kronos fell out over destroying or protecting humanity Uranos lost and led his followers to exile in space. But eventually they all died and were automatically resurrected back on Earth by the Machine. Uranos has since been kept in Exclusion but his people were put to good use. The 3rd brother Oceanus worried that he himself might go bad so he offered to lead the Uranites as the Oceanic Watch, to keep an eye on Lemuria and be ready to act with violence at the Prime Eternal's command.But we now catch up with Kro and the Eternal Sersi. Last issue we left them planning a dinner date, and now we see it happening in Kro's palace. Kro asks her why she has relationships with humans rather than Deviants. She ticks off the reasons:- Eternals and Deviants are traditional enemies. Deviants tend to have even shorter lives than humans. And then there's the risk of excess deviation. Kro protests that he himself has lived 20,000 years, which laughing Sersi points out makes him just a child in Eternal terms.But their meal is interrupted by Thena in her armour holding a sword to the Deviant's throat. Kro thinks his ex-lover is jealous over Sersi but she accuses *him* of jealously poisoning Tolau. Kro protests that no-one knows how to cause the 'change', and if he did he'd never do such a thing to 1 of his people. And he says he's sorry for her. When the 'change' happens she will have to either leave Tolau or her Eternal instinct will make her kill him. Angry Thena exits swearing never to kill her lover.Sersi prepares to leave too because the mood has been broken. But she asks Kro if he *did* invite her to dinner to make Thena jealous. Kro says he is capable of multiple motives, and Sersi perfectly understands that.We follow Sersi to her own quarters where she is approached by Jack Of Knives, stealthily as is his wont but he makes himself known in case she was about to disrobe. Eternal clothing is I believe actually created and destroyed at will but he notes that she wears some genuine earrings. She tells him they are a gift from an old friend (but I don't think we know who). But she warns him that they aren't sufficiently important to her to be a source of blackmail.Last issue Ikaris was going to tell the Robson's how their son Toby died to give him new life. Sersi sent Jack to dissuade him with a threat to kill them and anyone else he revealed the Eternals' dirty secret to. Jack reports that Ikaris backed down and Sersi pays him the agreed fee. He turns down the offer of a drink because he's off to a party with his fellow Tricks, celebrating having helped elect the new Prime Eternal. This is the 1st Sersi (and the other Eternals in Lemuria) have heard of the election.Sersi brodcasts a psychic shout to Phastos, Kingo, Ikaris, Thena and Sprite to tell them that Thanos is now their boss. Just as he arrives on his flying throne to demand Phastos and their lives.


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Hail Thanos - part 4
The Eternals discovered that every time 1 of them is resurrected it is at the expense of a human life. Our main Eternals fled to the Deviant city Lemuria to learn how to live as mortals. But Thanos has become the Prime Eternal and came after Phastos who he expected could fix his damaged body and make the semi-Deviant a full Eternal. Now our Eternals want to rescues Phastos and kill Thanos. The Eternal priestess Ajak convinced them they needed the help of their Celestial Space Gods. But the only Celestial left on Earth is the dead Progenitor currently used by the Avengers as their base.Now Ikaris and Thena are waiting as a backup rescue team outside the the 'Mountain' that is the dead Celestial at the North Pole while the rest of the team are in the tower that is the Space God's staff.Sersi has openly knocked on the front door. Iron Man doesn't trust her and them, especially since the recent global climate problem that they say they solved (in #1-6). On the other hand Sub-Mariner is eager to take her up on her suggestion of dinner together. Namor thinks Stark is jealous because Tony and Sersi once had a fling. Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) is amused. Namor meets Sersi in a bedroom, but he suggests that they repair to a pool he brought from Atlantis which has very refreshing and stimulating water. She agrees and they leave the room.Sersi has left an earring on the bed. And we learn that Ajak, Kingo Sunen, Makkari and Sprite are miniaturised inside it. Now Sersi has smuggled them inside the Celestial so they can contact its mind to learn the secrets of the Deviants (created like the Eternals by the Celestials) and how to kill Thanos. They know Phastos will be holding out as Thanos tries to torture secrets out of him. But they also know he can't last long.Thanos is indeed torturing the Eternal. The mad Titan enjoys it but is aware that it's not achieving his goal. He consults Druig who suggests they threaten some humans, which always works. Thanos doesn't want to alert the Avengers to his presence by such an overt action, but Druig says there are subtle ways available to the Prime Eternal which will seem like natural events. So Thanos shows Phastos an image of the peaceful town of Little Hollow, and a button which he can press to make the Great Machine (that is spread throughout the Earth) cause it to be devoured by a volcano. Phastos weighs the pros and cons and decides to reveal a small secret. He integrated Thanos into the Eternals' Machine as much as he could but couldn't achieve full integration. For that Thanos must ask his parents how they created him.Thanos believes this is no help because Mentor/A'Lars and Sui-San are dead. But Druig points out that they weren't just Eternals of Titan they were Eternals of Earth and so the Great Machine resurrected them here. Where they have been imprisoned (for the crime of birthing Thanos as explained in the Eternals: Thanos Rises 1-shot). So Thanos goes to see his mother (who *he* killed, but she also tried to kill *him* at birth).Meanwhile back in the bedroom the 4 Eternals materialise full-size. Ajak is sure that the Celestials haven't truly abandoned their creations and that the Progenitor will help them. Her fellow priestess Makkari believes this is just an empty corpse but Ajak detects a lingering soul. She asks Sprite to use her illusion power to make them invisible as they head to where the soul is.Then we get 1 of the Machine's info-breaks, this time about the Avengers. It lists the current team as:-Thor (an All-Father class god-being in an adolescent stage).Captain America (surplus WWII-era weaponry held with nostalgic affection).Iron Man (human technologist).Black Panther (king with long-term holdings in the afterlife).Captain Marvel (alien/human hybrid).Phoenix (an avatar of 1 of the primordial cosmic powers of life).Starbrand (rival planetary defence system).Namor (Atlantean mutant king).It says that over the millennia the Eternals have considered Avengers groups to be a potential problem. (As revealed in the Eternals: Celestia 1-shot) Ajak was sent to investigate the 1MBC Avengers. They fought and killed her. She was of course resurrected but decided to let them live. A decision which she has often regretted.We return to Thanos who is currently torturing his father Mentor who has now died again. Druig reports that Sui-San has been resurrected again if he wants to return to her for the 6th time. Obviously he's having even less luck with them than he had with Phastos.The 4 cloaked Eternals sneak past Captain Marvel, Phoenix (Echo) and Thor. But the current very young Starbrand (Brandy Selby) wakes from her sleep because as 1 planetary defence system she is alerted (I think by the Machine) to the presence of the other such system in the shape of Eternals.Thanos and Druig are now in the resurrection chamber waiting for Mentor to be reborn. But Thanos admits that his hate for his parents is such that he wants them to be permanently dead. However Druig explains that Phastos discovered that the rebirth of *any* Eternal can only be delayed. To make the Machine stop it completely would destroy the Earth (I don't think we knew that already) because Machine and Earth are so tightly linked. So Thanos will just go back to torturing his parents.Starbrand finds the invisible Eternals and calls them out. Mind-reader and illusion-caster Sprite makes *herself* visible but disguised as Brandy's favourite stuffed toy Pooble-Peebs. The pair go off to play.Thanos is torturing both parents together. Druig opines that it'll do no good, but Thanos is satisfied with hurting the pair who caused all his pain (as he sees it). Sui-San responds that *he* is the cause of *her* pain. So he tries the Little Hollow gambit again. But Mentor says that town's death would be a better price to pay if it stops his son from being free to ravage more worlds. So Thanos pushes the button.Another Machine info-dump describes what will happen next. It will manufacture and deploy explosives to create a fault line beneath the town allowing magma to rise from the Earth's molten core to the surface. However it will take a short while for the explosives to be made and placed.The Machine can't disobey an order from the Prime Eternal but it still has free will. So it tells Ikaris and Thena about the imminent vent. They rush off to prevent the disaster.The 3 remaining Eternals, now no longer hidden by Sprite, reach the site where Ajak detected the Celestial's soul. There are 6 glowing discs on the floor and priests can communicate with the Celestial by standing on them. But they need all 6 discs to be occupied. However speedster Makkari manages to fool the system into thinking she's standing on them all at the same time. Ajak speaks to the God in its own language, and an image of the Progenitor appears before them.However at this point the Machine warns them that the Avengers' security system has detected their presence. Kingo Sunen goes to hold the team off leaving the priestesses to talk to the ghost of the Space God.


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Hail Thanos - part 5
Thanos has become Prime Eternal. To defeat him our main group of Eternals are seeking help from the only Celestial left on Earth - the dead 1 at the North Pole that is being used as Avengers HQ. The Eternals don't want to tell the Avengers what's going on so some of them have sneaked into the place leaving Ikaris and Thena outside as a rescue team if necessary. However Thanos isn't a true Eternal and so isn't yet fully integrated into the Great Machine. He's been torturing his Eternal parents to find out how to achieve his aim but to no avail. So his next plan is to threaten the small US town of Little Hollow with a volcanic eruption to get Mentor and Sui-San to talk. But the Machine has alerted Ikaris and Thena to that, and they've rushed  off heroically. And now the Avengers security system has detected the intruders.Last issue the very young Starbrand noticed the Eternals, but Sprite is distracting her as an animated version of her favourite toy. Sersi is keeping Sub-Mariner occupied in a hot tub, and they both choose to ignore the alarm. The priestess Ajak is still trying to get the 'ghost' of the Celestial to talk to her while fellow priestess Makkari continues racing around occupying 6 necessary spots 'simultaneously'. Last issue Kingo Sunen went to hold the Avengers off. Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Phoenix (Maya Lopez) and Thor are rushing to the spot when they are suddenly confronted by someone claiming to be Skullathar The Destructorite who threatens them with dire consequences if they fight him. It's professional actor Kingo doing his stuff.Thena teleports in to Little Hollow but Ikaris has already flown there and is now foolishly trying to move the town out of the way of the volcano 1 building at a time. But that wooden house breaks when he tries to lift it up. Then Gilgamesh the Forgotten One joins them and asks what Thena's plan is. But she hasn't got 1.We get an interlude with Thanos and his Eternal toady Druig reminding us of the volcano plan to get his parents to cooperate. But Thanos is keeping something from Druig ...... and we get 1 of the Machine's infodumps telling us what it is (basically by telling us the plot of the recent Eternals: The Heretic 1-shot). When Uranos and his Uranites lost the Eternal civil war he claimed that he had set a self-destruct mechanism in his hidden armoury which would destroy the Machine (and with it the Earth) if he died. So instead the Eternals imprisoned him in the Exclusion while they failed to find the armoury. However in the 1-shot Uranos gave Thanos the access codes to the armory (and presumably told him where it is). Now Thanos can destroy the Earth whenever he wants. (That is unless as some Eternals believe Uranos was bluffing.)Meanwhile Thena has telepathically contacted Ajak and told her what's happening. She asks for some techno-theological deus ex machina. Ajak tells her she has a pocket dimension generator in her room in Celestia. Ikaris zooms there and brings it back to Thena who encases the town with it. The Machine explains (this time without an infodump) that Ajak created it to trap Makkari in when they fought (in the Eternals: Celestia 1-shot). This time it has also wrapped all the town's inhabitants in protective bubbles too, so that they come to no harm when the 3 Eternals lift the whole town-bubble into the air and move it away from the imminent eruption.However when they put it down and take the bubble(s) away the town is still wrecked, and the people are not pleased. Even when Ikaris explains to them about the volcanic eruption he claims to have saved them from. Then the magma erupts in the distance and the people start considering whether their insurance will cover it.Back at HQ Thor is about to smite the Destructorite with his hammer when the foe warns them about the danger to Little Hollow. Iron Man detects that he's right, and CapA sends most of the team there. He and Panther remain to deal with Skullathar who takes a blow from Cap's shield. But BP has worked out that he's really an Eternal in disguise. So Kingo is free to use his skill at multiple martial arts. However he still falls to the duo. Meanwhile priestess Ajak is angry that her god won't talk to her (when it *did* talk to the blasphemous Avengers). So she summons a weapon to attack the 'ghost' with.The other Avengers arrive at Little Hollow to find that the Eternals have saved the town but the eruption is still a problem. Until Phoenix uses her cosmic fire to settle it down. The Avengers want the Eternals to explain what happened or they'll 'arrest' them. Thena wants to keep the Avengers distracted so she allows Ikaris to start a fight.With their volcanic plan thwarted Thanos and Druig revisit the Titan's father A'Lars/Mentor in his cell. They tell him they intend to invade his mind in search of the secret they believe it holds concerning Thanos' semi-Deviant nature. A'lars believes he can repel them, but Druig thinks that *his* Eternal mental skill combined with Thanos' mental power will succeed. We see them (symbolically) punching a hole through Mentor's surface consciousness to descend a stairway into his subconscious.Now it's time for another Machine infodump about Mentor's mental defences:-The self/other shield in the surface consciousness would normally keep out any invader, but Thanos' sheer willpower has broken through it.A'Lars has caused a 'flood' to impede progress through his subconscious. He has deliberately unleashed his obsessions and personal demons including his self-doubt and self-loathing. These will automatically home in on their primary cause, his son Thanos.Then they will have to negotiate the Eternal's memory looking for the info they seek. A'Lars will have turned it into a confusing maze, exacerbated by false memories created by the subconscious demons.Lastly what they seeks has been placed in the vault of repression. But the other repressed memories therein will be another source of danger.That's all for Thanos this issue and we return to the Avengers/Eternals face-off at Little Hollow. The fight still hasn't started and the 3 Eternals are mentally debating strategy at high-speed. Gilgamesh has to be brought up-to-date and agrees that they must fight to keep these Avengers from interfering with Ajak's task. It remains to pick opponents.Gilgamesh has the 3 other Forgotten Ones in pocket dimensions. He very briefly unleashes them and they blast Captain Marvel. Thena throws Ajak's dimensional trap at Phoenix, and it sucks her in. Phoenix isn't Thor's best bud but he still avenges the strike at a fellow Avenger by calling down the lightning on Thena. She responds by assuring him that Maya is safe. Iron Man checks that Ikaris is virtually indestructible before calling down a satellite strike on *him*. Battle continues between the 3 pairs.In Avengers HQ Ajak has proved that the inhibition preventing Eternals from attacking Celestials doesn't apply to their ghosts. Her weapon has injured the Progenitor's ghost and now it deigns to reply to her. But she doesn't like what it says.


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Hail Thanos - part 1
In the 1st arc of this series Thanos went on a murder spree through the Eternals. Then some of them discovered the truth about their resurrection system. Every time 1 of them is re-'born' it is at the cost of the life of a human (or sometimes a Deviant as suggested in the Eternals: Celestia 1-shot). Ikaris, Kingo Sunen, Phastos, Sersi, Sprite and Thena moved to the Deviants' Lemuria to learn how to change (which seems to mean stopping getting into fights and 'dying').Now we find Kingo, Sersi and Thena staying with Thena's latest Deviant lover Tolau The Delirious (who we briefly met in #3). His cliffside home is now besieged by angry Deviants who have arrived in a ship suspended from gasbags. But the Deviant leader Warlord Kro also shows up on his hovering throne to warn them off and greet the guests. Thena starts to explain the situation but he doesn't want to talk to his ex-lover. (And Tolau begins to think 'dating' Thena may not have been his best idea.) Instead he invites Sersi for a chat.The 2 get on his throne which he moves out of hearing distance. Sersi *does* explain their predicament and Kro agrees they can stay, but to save face he must insist on them publicly abasing themselves before him. And also she must have dinner with him. They both agree that would be a bad idea so they'll do it. But as an afterthought he asks where the other 3 Eternal refugees are ...Phastos and Sprite have accompanied Ikaris to the grave of 13-yr old Toby Robson. Ikaris had been given a vision that Toby was in danger and had sworn to save him, but it turned out that Toby was the life that resurrected Ikaris last issue. Sprite (who had been left to watch over Toby) says that visions never show you enough for you to be able to prevent them coming true. Phastos (who had been trying in vain to change the way the Resurrection Chamber worked, but instead unleashed Thanos) tells Ikaris that he's the type of hero who would always risk his life to save the day (as he did last issue) no matter what the cost. And adds that he has now dedicated his every waking moment to dealing with Thanos. But Ikaris flies off to confess to Toby's parents.But when he gets there he's stopped by Jack Of Knives (1 of the 4 Tricks, Eternal crime lords) who's come to talk him out of it. It would not be in the Eternals' interest to have the world knowing this secret (and also someone's paying him) so anyone he tells will be killed. Ikaris threatens to kill *him* but Jack points out that would be against his new moral stance. And then he leaves as Mrs Robson comes out of her house to see what's going on. Ikaris can't risk calling Jack's bluff so he just tells her he's come to apologise for saving her son and offers to do anything she wants. And what she wants is to shout her grief and rage at him, which he accepts before flying away.Meanwhile in the subspace tunnels of the Eternals' Great Machine Thanos is scheming with the Polarian Eternal Druig. When Phastos rescued Thanos from the black hole that he fell into in Guardians Of The Galaxy (2019) #6, he left him with an artificial heart and a damaged body that will shortly kill him. And also with a fail-safe kill switch that Phastos can trigger with a thought. But Druig wiped the memory of that from Phastos' mind in #6. Now they need to get Thanos' body properly healed. For that they need to make the Machine accept him as a true Eternal, but Druig says he doesn't know how to do that. But if Thanos were to be elected Prime Eternal then he could *make* it happen.Thanos, the Shame of Titan, thinks this is a poor joke but Druig says he's been working on it. The Eternals are about to join together as the Uni-Mind to select their new leader, and Zuras is so confidant of being re-elected that he's not been campaigning. He's really convoking the Uni-Mind so he can mindwipe the Ikaris faction who have learned the secret behind their resurrections. As Sersi revealed last issue, this has happened many time before. If they don't join the Uni-Mind his re-election will strengthen his authority to hunt them down and mindwipe them.Druig shows Thanos 1 of this series' info-displays showing the state of play. Zuras could normally rely on the Olympian votes but Ikaris and co are absent and Druig has used leverage to persuade some of the others to abstain. The Polarians would have supported Zuras too but Thanos has killed most of them and the remainder will follow their default leader himself. Oceanus, leader of the Oceanic Watch, will abstain as usual but the rest of the Watch are disaffected Uranites who will vote for Thanos. And Druig's bought the loyalty of the Tricks. The Celestial Priests are busy with their own concerns (as seen in Et: Celestia), as are the Damocles Foundation. The Titanos Hermits will live up to their name, and the Gaian Sisters don't care. The Excluded are of course excluded. The Forgotten never join the Uni-Mind specifically to avoid mindwipe. The Hex and those of Unknown Location can't be contacted. And Thanos himself now has a vote since the Machine recognised him as at least Eternal-ish. He rates it as Zuras 14-18 votes, Thanos 17-18, so Thanos has the edge.Thanos asks Druig what's in it for him. Druig says he's always been low on the pecking order, but over the years as various 'great' Eternals fell from grace he's slowly risen in rank. But he knows that he can only ever be a king-maker not a king so his highest aspiration is to be the right-hand man of 1 such as Thanos. However the Machine tells us that Druig The Snake of course has more devious plans. When he deleted Thanos' self-destruct from Phastos' mind he copied it into his own, so he can get rid of the Titan when he's done with him.Sersi returns to the others to find artist Tolau putting finishing touches to a statue of himself and Thena. Imperious Thena is sculpted from an alloy of secondary adamantium while beseeching Tolau is stitched together from chunks of perishable meat. He wants to finish it because he doesn't know how long he has left. (I'm not sure this if is because of the lumps we see growing on his arm or his fear of the wrath of Kro. The Machine hints at the Eternals being a threat to him.)Zuras' administrator Domo has assembled all the Eternals who are coming, and Zuras begins the Uni-Mind. Druig tells cloaked Thanos that the Mind is supposed to be a place where the Eternal minds merge as 1 and a consensus emerges naturally. But he tells the Titan that it's really a bout of mental arm-wrestling so Thanos should find it easy. They slip into the merging and Zuras finds himself opposed by 1 who promises to replace the Celestial gods who have abandoned them and lead them to freedom, change and glory. Thanos wins the vote and Zuras is cast out. The Titan follows him and they fight. And then Thanos murders Zuras again (which is how #1 began).The Eternals present accept the choice of the Uni-Mind, but below the surface is chaos. Druig suggests that they resurrect the many still-dead Eternals into the Exclusion until they can be persuaded to be loyal. But then Thanos does his 1st act as Prime Eternal. He crushes Druig's skull because he knew that the Snake would keep a copy of his kill-switch, and of course wouldn't share it with any others.


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Only Death is eternal, finale
The Eternals' Great Machine is failing, which is bad news for the Earth because it is an integral part of the world. And in particular the Resurrection Machine is broken which is bad news for the Eternals. The Prime Eternal Zuras and many others are dead and can't be brought back. It was Thanos who killed them and a group of Eternals have been trying to work out which Eternal has been helping him. They've finally realised it's Phastos who maintains the Machines. They went to confront him but he sicced Thanos on them.Now we'll find out what it's all about. We begin 1 month ago with Thanos awakening from his latest death which involved falling into a black hole (Guardians Of The Galaxy (2019) #6) with a gaping hole in his chest (after Gamora stabbed him through the heart in Infinity Wars Prime). Phastos is standing over him explaining what's happening.The Eternals also recently returned from death (after Avengers (2018) #4) and Phastos was the 1st to be resurrected. While he was alone he discovered something which made him consider suicide by throwing himself into the temporal eddies in Titanos. And in 1 of the eddies he happened to see the ruined Thanos. He rescued him and patched him up, discovering in the process that Thanos is a true Eternal, unlike the other Titanian offspring of A'Lars and Sui-San, and so can use the Great Machine. So he gave the Titan access to some of the Machine's systems but *not* the Resurrection Machine. And he now tells Thanos that his damaged body will still kill him. But if he does some work for him then when it's over he will allow the Resurrection Machine to give him a new body.Thanos knows that Phastos won't really let him live but he expects to be able to get the upper hand at some point and regain his life. But he also knows that Phastos knows he will think like this and expects to outwit him. So the game begins.We now return to the present where Thanos attacks Gilgamesh, Ikaris, Kingo Sunen, Sersi and Thena to stop them getting to Phastos. They're all in a loop in the Machine's system. The Titan fends off the others while concentrating on Ikaris. But the Forgotten One uses his special bond with the Great Machine to open a portal to a raging nuclear core (or something like that) and throws the Titan in. Sersi then uses a technique she dreamed up after She-Hulk told her how Thanos killed her by suffocating her with a fungus. (That's not how he killed her in Free Comic Book Day: Civil War II, and I can't remember any other instance.) The expert matter manipulator creates 'fungal plasma' which invades Thanos' body and turns his cells into nuclear reactors. Kingo's swords and Thena's spear administer what looks like the coup-de-grace.In the Reality Loom Phastos is still trying to fix the Great Machine, or at least stop it from getting worse. But he's failing and fears the end of the world.In New York Sprite is still looking after Toby Robson. Ikaris had a temporal vision in Titanos of regretting not being able to save the boy from death. He's been watching over Toby but left him in the care of Sprite while he dealt with Thanos. Lightning bolts start striking near them in the park as the world gets further out of kilter.Back in the Exclusion at the South Pole Thanos is refusing to die and everybody's throwing everything at him. But Phastos wants Gilgamesh and Ikaris to help him hold the Machine together. He tells the Machine to eject them from the loop, but it doesn't work like he wanted because they get scattered over the Earth, including Ikaris at the North Pole, and the Machine's teleportation system is now down. So Ikaris just flies from Pole to Pole in a few instants. Phastos tells him to use his powers to reconstruct the 'central span'. As Ikaris rushes off to do it Druig steps out of the shadows and invades Phastos' mind.We are now treated to 1 of those diagrams, this time explaining the structure of an Eternals' consciousness. The surface consciousness, subconscious and personal memory are analogous to that of humans. But the Machine holds frequent back-ups of the memory which are used during resurrection, including deliberately going back to older states when deemed necessary. It also provides a shared cultural memory. And the core identity of each Eternal is encoded in the 'fundamental structure of reality'. (An ancient(?) attempt to rewrite that code has been redacted from Eternal memory.) There is also another Classified element of the consciousness.Ikaris uses Eternal matter control to do his designated task. Sersi would have been able to do it easier, but she wouldn't have been able to survive the raging fire of the Reality Loom long enough. The task kills him but not before he succeeds in mending the Machine.Presumably that includes the teleportation system because Gilgamesh, Kingo Sunen, Sersi and Thena are now with Phastos wanting to know why he sabotaged the Machine and brought Thanos here. Phastos says he can kill Thanos with a thought, but then discovers he's forgotten how. (The work of Druig I believe.) The Great Machine tells them the Resurrection Machine is back online. Then Thena tells it to bring Ikaris back 1st.We see a representation of a still-glitching Great Machine saying that the effects on the world's ecosystem have stopped and everything will soon be fine.Later Phastos wants to explain why he did what he did but Sersi recommends they just throw him in the Exclusion until the Uni-Mind can convene and decide what to do with him. Phastos protests that they'll reset his mind to before all this happened,  but they have to understand the 'cost'. Sersi pushes for immediate Exclusion but Thena wants to hear him out. He says that while he was the only Eternal resurrected he studied the Machine deeper than he ever had before, and discovered the cost of their resurrections.We see Ikaris' body being recreated, and then the Great Machine adds the spark of life. And we see Toby Robson die in his bed.Phastos has now told  his 4 listeners what he discovered (ie that every Eternal resurrection requires a human death). And back in Av(2018)#4 they realised that their function of protecting the Earth was now pointless because the superhumans can do it themselves (which is why they committed mass suicide then). So he decided to stop the Machine to stop the killing. But then he found that stopping the Machine would kill the Earth.Gilgamesh walks away in despair because of all the errant Eternals he has executed. Ikaris joins them and learns the truth, and Sprite turns up to tell them that Toby has just died. Thena remembers how eager Sersi was to shut Phastos away, and realises that she knew all this already. Sersi admits it and says this has happened many times before but only she here retains the memory.Now Zuras is reborn and calls everyone to Olympia. Ikaris explains what's happened. Zuras agrees to convene the Uni-Mind to discuss it. A bit later Thena asks Sersi what will happen, and Sersi tells them the truth. There are too many Eternals who don't care enough about individual humans rather than humanity. Humans die all the time so what does a few more matter? The vote will go against them and it will be wiped from the protesters' memory. She thinks Thena is right to associate with the short-lived ever-changing Deviants. But what other option is there for the Eternals?Later we see Ikaris, Kingo Sunen, Phastos, Sersi, Sprite and Thena at the gates of the Deviant city Lemuria. They ask to be let in. They wish to be mortal.


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Only Death is eternal, part 1
This issue has a voiceover from what turns out to be the Machine that supervises Eternal resurrections among other things. Now it watches 1 of them awaken naked and tests his mental state by asking "Ikaris, what are the principles?". Ikaris replies "Protect Celestials. Protect the Machine. Correct excess Deviation." which the Machine finds satisfactory. Ikaris remembers his latest death as all the Eternals killed each other (committing group suicide in Avengers (2018) #4). Now he awakes in the Exclusion, an Eternal base under the South Pole 'sealed between 6 artificial molecules'.The Machine wants to run further tests by getting Ikaris to use his powers, starting with his eye-beams. But as his uniform forms around him the hero doesn't want to waste time. The Machine says he's as brusque as ever, but Ikaris comments that the AI isn't usually this talkative, and the Machine has to admit to itself this is true and may indicate a problem. Ikaris learns that he is the last to return because he was the last to die. And he proves 1 of his powers works OK by flying into the air.The Machine connects Ikaris to the Eternals' ruler in far-off Olympia, and Zuras tells him that his fellows have decided that 'she' must be freed from her prison in the Exclusion. Ikaris isn't happy about that but will obey. As the hero heads off, the Machine ruminates about Exclusion. Sometimes an Eternal makes a mistake, and as a punishment is mindwiped and allowed to restart their life (maybe by destruction and reassembly like Ikaris has just been through). But a severe mistake questions the very essence of the Eternal, who as a result is condemned to Exclusion (actual imprisonment? or destruction without reassembly?).The Machine further recalls some of those who are now referred to as Excluded with a code letter. Excluded U was the 1st, who wanted to wipe out all non-Eternals on Earth. (The Marvel Fandom Wiki identifies him as Uranos, brother of Kronos, which is reasonable but he and his followers were exiled to Uranus and Titan where he died.) Another was guilty of apocalyptic auto-deification. (This would be Kronos, father of Zuras, whose experiments destroyed the original Eternal city Titanos while raising himself to godhood - so he's presumably Excluded K.) A 3rd sired a son who killed half the Galaxy with a finger-click. (The son is obviously Thanos, so the guilty party is his father A'Lars/Mentor, brother of Zuras - hence Excluded A. But he left Earth for Titan.)And we now find that Excluded SP is Sprite (who used to be male but is now female, probably to align with the COVID-delayed Eternals film). Ikaris tells her she's been restored to her last safe backup (hopefully avoiding what got her Excluded last time) so she's going to find the world has changed a lot. Trickster Sprite uses her illusion power to create multiple copies of herself who dodge around the hero. Ikaris blasts away with his eye-beams but isn't quick enough to stop her escaping via Machine's teleportation system. He asks Machine to send him to the same place.We get a digression about Eternal teleportation. They can disassemble and reassemble their bodies at will and can use that to teleport short distances, but long distances take too much out of them. So Machine has a network of subdimensional threads across the globe which an Eternal can use for long distance teleportation. (This still involves disassembly and reassembly, like Star Trek's system.) (The map of the Eternals' 6 global bases accompanying this bit suggests that Machine's links are only between *them*, but logic and the action in this issue dictate more targets.)Sprite and Ikaris land in Manhattan (with electronic billboards displaying some X-Men battle or other). Sprite is gleefully astonished at everything (it seems her safe backup goes back to when humans were apemen). But it makes her ask Ikaris what she did that was so bad. He tells her she grew bored of eternal childhood and 'almost destroyed the Machine' (a not totally accurate description of the 2006 series).Iron Man shows up to see what's happening. Machine's commentary tells us that IM found Ikaris dying among the bodies of his fellows (Av#4 above), and Machine further says that the suicide was because they discovered that the Celestials only created them to protect the humans they were *really* interested in. Tony Stark is glad to hear they're all OK now and asks after Sersi. But he's confused about Sprite being female (he was there when male Sprite was killed in the 2006 series). Ikaris tells him it's the kind of change Eternals go through every 25,000 years or so.Then Machine contacts the duo to warn them about excess Deviation. The contact seems to double them up in pain, but they assure Iron Man everything's OK and the problem is an Eternal 1. So Shellhead leaves them to it. Ikaris has to explain to his companion that Iron Man isn't made of iron. She'll hear about lots of such beings here, like Spider-Man who isn't part spider. It's like he himself isn't the mythical Icarus, and Zuras isn't Zeus. It annoys the gods that the humans keep getting them mixed up.As they descend into a sewer Sprite says that even with most of her memories missing she still knows what they're going to do now. Machine explains (seemingly to us) about the 3rd principle - Correct excess Deviation. The Deviant species are all different, but they usually keep within an acceptable range of size and are usually friendly (!?). The Eternals deal with the outliers, like the enormous beast they now come across with tentacles and teeth menacing a hapless tourist. As the Eternals beat it up Machine tells us not to judge the Deviants so harshly, after all some of *us* are serial killers.Afterwards they have to explain it all to the  police, etc. Sprite is told she's too young to be a superhero. (So this is set within the Outlawed event.) She continues to be fascinated by everything from hot dogs to the idea of television. But Ikaris is concerned about what their purpose is now that the Celestials have discarded them.Their next teleportation stop is Olympia, in an echo dimension behind Mount Olympus in northern Greece. They are met by Phastos and Domo, Zuras' administrator, with bad news. Zuras has been killed by 5 powerful fingers pressed into his skull. The assassin arrived and left via the teleportation network but without leaving any trace of his identity. They are joined by Druig (a Polarian Eternal from Siberia) who advises them to wait. With no other Eternals queued up for resurrection Zuras will be back soon to tell them who killed him.Devious Druig and the impatient Ikaris display their usual antagonism. But when Druig suggests they re-Exclude Sprite Ike has to agree because it was Zuras who killed Sprite last time. Even the accused has to agree with that logic but points out that *her* hands couldn't have inflicted that damage. Druig suggests she probably tricked simpleton Ikaris into doing it. So Ikaris nuts his nose and the duo leave.Machine tells them that someone unknown to him is traversing the network inside a distortion. And he has tracked that distortion to Titanos in western Canada, 'superimposed between 3 seconds from now and 2 seconds ago'. The pair go there, and Machine tells us that when Kronos destroyed it, and killed all the Eternals for the 1st time and nearly destroyed the Machine, he was investigating time. As a result the ruined city is now a mishmash of times past and future, always changing. They see 1 image of Ikaris at the grave of 13 year old Toby Robinson apologising for not saving him. Ikaris tells Sprite that hasn't happened yet, but swears he *will* save this unknown boy.But they are interrupted by a voice saying that it is *his* intention that the only eternal being left will be Death. Enter Thanos, looking somewhat the worse for wear.


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Only Death is eternal, part 2
The Eternals have been resurrected after their most recent deaths by their Great Machine system. Ikaris was sent to revive the permanently teen Sprite who had been Excluded for his earlier mass mind-wipe of his fellow Eternals. This time he came back as a she. But then their leader Zuras was murdered in Olympia, and Ikaris and Sprite discovered the culprit was Thanos currently in their derelict old capital Titanos.Ikaris is happy because there's nothing he loves more than a good fight, and he's never fought Thanos before - an oversight which he quickly remedies. And Thanos is equally happy to accommodate him. They trade blows and blasts, and Ikaris uses his flight to turn his body into a missile.The Great Machine observes this as it observes everything. Wrecked Titanos is a shifting jumble of temporal fragments and time portals through which flying Ikaris takes the combat. The Machine follows their flight through the ages in its memory until they return to where they started.But then Thanos ends the fight by ripping Ikaris' head off. Except it turns out to be 1 of Sprite's illusions and the 'young' Eternal helps his wounded fellow from the scene. Ikaris wants to return for more but Sprite says he wants him for evidence. The other Eternals still don't trust the youngster so he needs Ikaris to make them believe Thanos is here.Last issue in Titanos they saw a future scene of Ikaris standing over the grave of a 13-year old Toby Robson apologising for not saving him, and Ikaris vowed to prevent that from happening. The Great Machine now recalls a similar occurrence in the early Bronze Age when Ikaris saw a Titanos image of a young boy menaced by a monster from the seas. He went there and found such a boy who said he'd seen no monster. Assuming it was a future happening Ikaris instructed the boy to light a bonfire signal when the monster came and the Great Machine would send Ikaris in response. The boy waited. He grew up and became a father and then a grandfather, but still he kept watch for the monster. Then he died and his family burnt his body on a pyre. But Ikaris of course arrived in response. The family blamed him for their grandfather's 'wasted' life. But by chance that's when the monster (probably a Deviant) showed up. Ikaris killed it but realised it was the grandson he'd seen in Titanos. However the Machine adds that the village dined well for a long time on the body, and always lit a bonfire in time of need even though no 'god' ever came again.Then the Machine wonders why it bothered to recall all that when there are more important things to think about. It takes it as another sign that there's something wrong with itself.Ikaris and Sprite have reported what they found to Druig and Kingo Sunen. Druig is sceptical. Zuras' killer used the Great Machine's teleportation system which Thanos can't do because he's not a True Eternal. Ikaris points to the wounds Thanos' fingers gouged in his face and suggests they match the wounds on Zuras. Druig wants to wait for the Machine to resurrect Zuras but Ikaris wants Thanos to be hunted down immediately.Then Phastos arrives to inform them that Zuras won't be returning anytime soon. The Wardens of the Exclusion have been murdered and the resurrection machines are inoperative. Druig's immediate response is to call for the election of a new Prime Eternal. Ikaris accuses him of conspiring with Thanos to get himself elected, but Druig counters that he's too unpopular. And in fact Ikaris is a much more likely candidate, and he went to the Exclusion to release Sprite and now only he and Sprite claim to have seen Thanos. *He* could be the killer. Ikaris threatens to kill *him*.Now Sersi joins them all and warns Ikaris that such threats are playing into Druig's hands. And she tells Druig to stop spreading discord. She offers to heal Ikaris' wounds, but Druig can't resist accusing those 2 of conspiracy.We now get a break for a little history on the Titan Schism of the 2nd Age. After the Uranos and Kronos schisms hinted at last time, Zuras suggested that the Eternals' numbers should be limited and the Great Machine should be constrained. His brother A'Lars contended that the Machine should be further developed and new True Eternals should be created. They went to war and Zuras' majority won, but due to mind-wipe none of the surviving/resurrected Eternals know which side they were on. A'Lars was allowed to go found a colony off-Earth to try his experiment. Taking the name Mentor he went to the Uranos colony on Titan where he found 1 survivor Sui-San and they used Eternal technology to create a new race of pseudo-Eternals from their DNA. These Titans weren't registered in the Great Machine.Later Sui-San gave actual birth to Thanos who grew up to kill the other Titanians including his parents, and later wipe out half the population of the universe (in the Infinity Gauntlet event, but the were all restored to life). A'Lars and Sui-San are in the Great Machine but they are Excluded. Mentor's experiment was deemed a failure.Ikaris, Sprite, Kingo Sunen and Phastos have gone with Sersi to her quarters where she uses her matter manipulation power to heal Ikaris' wounds. They would have healed naturally eventually, but she offers to give the warrior an appropriate permanent scar if he wants. Sprite asks if they should warn the humans about Thanos. Sersi says Tony Stark and his friends would like to know. But Phastos points out that Thanos is the least of their problems.The Great Machine has made various comments along the lines that it *is* the planet Earth. Now Phastos makes it clear that unless they repair the Machine the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable within days. The already unstable ecosystem will collapse. Kingo likens it to 1 of the films he (nearly) acted in, and Sersi regrets including him in her conspiracy. Phastos is also worried about how Thanos got access to the Machine. An actual Eternal must have given him an 'exception', but the Machine can't tell them who the traitor is. Sprite wonders why they're all looking at *her*. But then she thinks Sersi must trust her to have her here, but Sersi says she just wants to keep an eye on her.They decide to hunt for the traitor. Ikaris says he's no good at detective work so he'll leave them to it ...... and instead goes to New York to find Toby Robson. He knocks on the boy's window to wake him up and promise him protection. The confused boy thinks he's dreaming.


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Only Death is eternal, part 4
Thanos has killed the Eternals' leader Zuras and broken the Resurrection Machine so he can't be revived. Someone has to have helped him so Sersi has organised a cabal with Kingo Sunen, Phastos, Sprite and Thena to uncover the traitor. But meanwhile Thanos kills many Eternals of Polaria leaving Druig in charge there which makes him a prime suspect.Phastos is in the Reality Loom in somewhere called the Isolation, trying to repair the Great Machine (of which the Resurrection Machine is part). He appears to be just hitting it with a hammer, but the Machine's voiceover tells us it only *looks* like a hammer. 1 consequence of the Machine's problems is that climate change is being speeded up, and the humans have noticed. Sersi has arranged dinner with Tony Stark to exchange info. She's not hopeful but it's good to butter him and his Illuminati chums up. (She looks down on his group because they're not even Bavarian. It seems she was a member of the the original Bavarian Illuminati but the voiceover tells us she quit because of their inferior buffets.) She's not going to mention Thanos. She's sure she can handle Tony. She'll flirt with him but try *not* to seduce him - this time.Kingo and Thena go to Polaria in the Arctic to confront Druig. They had to get there the hard way because he's cut off teleportation network access to the place after the slaughter. As Druig invites them in they try threatening him. The Polarian says he expected Ikaris for that job, but they say he's busy elsewhere ...... He's in New York looking after teen Toby Robson who a vision (in Titanos in #1) told him he had to protect. Ikaris is watching from the sky as Toby heads for school but he's sent permanently young Sprite to accompany him. Toby warns her that people will think she's his girlfriend. The jokester says she'll risk boy cooties for the cause.The Machine interrupts the story for a brief history lesson. When the old Eternal capital Titanos fell there was a struggle between other cities to replace it. Celestia became the religious centre but Olympia and Polaria vied for temporal supremacy. War was averted by an exchange of 'hostages' which is how Polarian Ikaris wound up in Olympia.Thena airs her suspicion that Druig's sudden rise to Polarian leadership when a (hopefully temporary) new Prime Eternal needs to be elected is more than coincidence. Druig points out that his potential electoral base has been drastically reduced. Kingo thinks that expert mind-controller Druig might be able to 'persuade' lots of others to vote for him. The Polarian counters that his fellow Eternals are much more difficult to control than humans. He also reminds Kingo that situations aren't always as clear cut as they seem ...... cue a flashback to 1242. Ogedei Khan, son of Ghenghis Khan has sent the brilliant General Subutai to invade Europe with the Mongol horde. Kingo Sunen knows Druig is with them and believes he is controlling them. He confronts him at a campfire. A warrior fires an arrow at him which Kingo plucks out of the air. Druig takes him for a walk to avoid further violence. He claims *not* to be mind-controlling the Mongols, and he has had nothing to do with the rise of the Mongol Empire nor their brutally efficient methods. He's just along for the ride to study what happens.Druig suggests that if Kingo wants to stop the army he could assassinate Subutai. Without him the invasion would crumble. Kingo creeps into the leader's tent but can't bring himself to do it. It was 1 thing to protect humans from Druig, but another to protect them from themselves. He would be taking the control that he accused Druig of.But in the morning the horde, still led by Subutai, turns back to go home. Druig has stayed behind with a pair of horses for himself and Kingo. He explains that Ogedei Khan has died of a stroke and the Mongols must return home to select a new ruler. Druig claims not to have known what was happening. But he points out that if Kingo *had* killed Subutai then the angry warriors might possibly have decided to continue into Europe for revenge.In the present Kingo advises Thena not to jump to conclusions. She agrees not to assume he's guilty, but to still maintain him as a suspect. Druig points out that he wouldn't know how to sabotage the Great Machine. Thena counters that a lot of Polarian scientists were killed as well as the potential leaders. Druig admits that would be a good plan - kill his scientist collaborator plus a lot more to muddy the waters. He congratulates Thena on having a mind as devious as his own.Then Kingo says he doesn't believe Druig *is* guilty - because Thanos has just teleported in to throttle him. He and Thena leap to the defence. The victim Druig doesn't try to run away but instead launches his own mental attack which makes Thanos think he's alone in a totally white space. The Titan reaches out and finds the Polarian again, but Thena seizes the opportunity to run her sword through his chest. Kingo leaps to chop his head off but the villain teleports away to safety.Somehow Thanos got here and escape via the Machine's teleportation network even though Druig had sealed Polaria off. And now the Machine tells them he's managing to hide in the network itself. Druig reminds them that this was a trick used by Gilgamesh and the Forgotten, who previously managed to deactivate the machine and hated other Eternals especially himself. Thena says they'll need Ikaris if they're going after those Eternals.When they've gone Thanos teleports back in. Apparently during the fight Druig left a mental message in his head. Now he tells Thanos that he's insulted that the Titan chose some other Eternal(s) to ally with. He should have been his 1st choice as traitor.


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Only Death is eternal, part 3
Thanos has killed the Eternals' ruler Zuras, and disabled the Resurrection Machine so he can't be brought back to life. He must have had Eternal help to get access to the Eternals' teleportation system and so Sersi leads a conspiracy of Kingo Sunen, Phastos and Sprite to uncover the traitor. But these things are part of a general problem with the world-spanning AI Great Machine that serves the Eternals, which will have dire consequences for the Earth itself. Meanwhile Ikaris has gone to protect the boy Toby Robson because of a vision/prediction.But now we turn to another Eternal, Thena, asleep in Lemuria with her latest Deviant lover. Lemuria, the Deviant capital, isn't exactly under the Pacific but in a reality pocket connected to it. And the (mostly) short-lived Deviants don't limit their population like the Eternals so there are many thousands of them. Awakening Thena sends a dagger into the shoulder of a sneaking figure, knowing full well that it is Kingo Sunen. She calls Sersi and Sprite out of hiding too, and sends her lover Tolau to safety. She demands to know the reason for the invasion, and does she need to get her sword to defend herself.Sersi asks Sprite to generate illusions to show Thena the problem. According to the Machine Thena came to see Zuras yesterday and they had an argument. Thena readily explains that since they no longer had to follow the plan they believed the Celestials created them for, she had her own ideas. She was going to help their traditional enemies the Deviants rather than fight them. Her father Zuras just assumed she had another Deviant lover (which happens to be true). They parted with Thena threatening to kill him. Sersi explains that Zuras *is* dead (which at least *seems* to be a surprise to Thena) and so she's an obvious suspect.Meanwhile Ikaris is hovering over the Robsons' front garden when Toby's father Alex Robson leaves for work. That changes his plans for the day, and soon the whole neighbourhood is out taking photos. Toby explains that Ikaris appeared to him last night in what he thought was a dream to say he's here to protect him. Mother Sophia Robson asks what the danger is but Ikaris just responds that they should shelter from the hail. Which starts arriving in large car-wrecking chunks. The hero starts blasting ice out of the sky (while the rest of New York remains unprotected). The Machine comments to us that this is a sign of the climate catastrophe to come.The hail stops and Sophia invites their protector in for coffee. Ikaris explains that he doesn't think the weather has anything to do with Toby, who seems unremarkable. He just knows that there is an unknown threat he must protect him from. Sophia objects that Ikaris might himself be the problem when some other super-guy like Silver Surfer turns up to fight him. Alex asks if Ikaris can put Toby in a safe place until the danger is over, but Sophia doesn't want him missing school. When Toby asks Ikaris if he's his guardian angel, he gets the reply that the Eternals are guardian angels of the Earth.Back in Lemuria Thena accesses the Machine and confirms that it is broken and Zuras won't be returning, but more worrying to her is the danger to the planet. She and Sersi then continue an age-old animosity, and each suggest that the other could be the culprit.The Machine remembers a similar confrontation 100,000 years ago. Sersi invites Thena to 'lunch' among her entourage of animals. She comments that Thena has taken another Deviant lover Tzaigo. Thena replies that he's an intelligent peace-loving scientist, unlike Warlord Kro (a very-long-lived Deviant lover of Thena's who's still around now). She also points out that Sersi takes human lovers, but Sersi says she doesn't make the mistake of actually loving the fleeting beings as Thena does. She leads Thena to a hidden chamber where Tzaigo has been harvesting organs from humans and Neanderthals and using a machine to try to extend his life. And the Deviant shows up to confirm that Thena was just a specimen he was studying. Then a flick of a switch animates the corpses and Thena has to kill them all again, including her lover.Now Sersi still suspects Thena may be involved in Zuras' death. Kingo suggests they add Thena to their conspiracy to keep an eye on her, as they are doing with Sprite. Thena asks what if she refuses. But they don't have to answer because the Machine announces a message from Druig for Sersi. She takes the mental link but asks the Machine to broadcast it to the others. Druig informs her that he returned to his Eternal home Polaria to find that city's leader Valkin dead along with many others. He is now the ruler of Polaria, which he supposes makes *him* a suspect now.


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Hail Thanos - finale
Thanos has been elected Prime Eternal with the help of wily Druig, but is trying to find out how to shuck his Deviant heritage and become a genuine Eternal to be fully accepted by the Great Machine. The heroic Eternals we tend to concentrate on are trying to find out how to defeat him by sneaking into Avengers Mountain HQ to interrogate the dead Celestial whose body comprises the HQ. It hasn't gone well. As usual the Machine provides voiceover comments.Some of the Eternals (Gilgamesh, Ikaris, Thena) are fighting some Avengers (Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Thor) in a place called Little Hollow, but it's mainly a ploy to keep the Avengers away from their base. In the HQ Kingo Sunen is duelling Black Panther, and Sersi and Sub-Mariner are keeping each other occupied in a hot tub. Meanwhile priestess Ajak has been questioning their god with help from Makkari. But what she has learned is a shock - the Deviants were more important to the Celestial plan than the Eternals were.An info-dump/diagram explains it all. 4 billion years ago the sick Celestial called Progenitor died on Earth and his 'necrofluids' infected the world. This resulted in occurrences of unstable strange lifeforms which never survived. 1 million years ago Celestials created the Deviants to interact with the necrofluid. They stabilised it but were themselves genetically unstable. The Eternals were created to cull the Deviants of Excess Deviation, but only so that they can continue their purpose. They interbred with other Earth lifeforms to produce stable strange lifeforms, culminating in the Age Of Marvels (who were able to defeat the Celestials' enemy the Horde at the beginning of the current Avengers series).Priestess Ajak had always believed that the Celestials were gods, but now she realises that was all part of the Eternals' programming. She thought the Avengers blasphemers for using the Progenitor's body as their home, and that the Celestials would return to them if they ejected the heretics. But now she realises that the Avengers are just as much heirs to the Celestials as the Eternals are. Now her anger makes her want to see the Celestials brought to answer for their actions.Thena mentally contacts Ajak to see how things are going. Ajak admits that she has also found what they need to kill Thanos, and she uses the Machine to transport her Little Hollow to help in the fight. She punches out Thor who had Thena on the ropes. But then another Avenger rejoins the fray. Last issue Phoenix (Maya Lopez) was trapped in a space-time bubble. But now she breaks out and uses her Phoenix-fire to create a bubble of her own around the combatants, including Makkari who's super-sped here.In Olympos Thanos and Druig have been working their way through the mind of the Titan's father A'Lars/Mentor to find out how Thanos was created. Now they find the design schematics for the being and leave the wrecked mind. Domo uses this new knowledge in the resurrection engine, but still fails to make the Titan a true Eternal. Domo says that Thanos was made with the necessary connectors to integrate with the Machine, but now they are jammed with something he doesn't understand. "Death lies congealing in every part of you."Thanos laughs. He has changed himself, something the Eternals could never do. In his mind this makes him better than them all. In this mood he gives the failure Domo a swift death (but anyway the Eternal will just be automatically resurrected). Then he reminds Druig of his backup plan. Since he can't become a full Eternal he'll just destroy the Great Machine (and with it the Earth). In the Et: The Heretic 1-shot eternally imprisoned Uranos gave him the location and passcodes to his ancient armoury. Now he tells the Machine (which must obey the Prime Eternal) to activate Uranos' doomsday fail-safe which will do what he needs. Then he and Druig, along with the Oceanic Watch team of Eternals go to the ancient ruined Eternal city of Titanos wher they can escape into the timestream.Druig wishes he'd thought of doing something to prevent this. The Machine can't disobey but it can and does alert the Eternals. Sersis telepathically tells the others to stand down and asks them to link her telepathically to the Avengers. She informs them that Thanos is alive and on Earth and about to destroy it. She begs them to let her people go and stop him. Captain America is with Black Panther and Kingo Sunen and tells his team to comply. CA and BP let KS go. Phoenix drops her bubble and the others go ...... to Titanos where Kingo and Sersi join them. Thanos greets them and sends the Watch to battle them while he himself takes on Ikaris. The Eternal is no match for the Titan who then turns on Druig, suspecting him of telling his foes that he was leaving via Titanos. The Machine announces that it is priming the detonation ...... but then it does something else. Thanos is shocked to see his limbs becoming encased in something. The Machine announces that it has been recently programmed to activate the fail-safe that Phastos programmed into Thanos' rebuilt body (#7) if the doomsday countdown ever got this far. And it reads a note from the programmer Druig relating that he set this up before Thanos, as he expected, wiped knowledge of the fail-safe from his mind (#8). Now Druig gloats over his (forgotten) cleverness as Thanos is completely encased. And he kicks him into Titanos' unstable time-slices. The Machine can now halt the countdown, and Druig claims the victory as the other Eternals are still fighting the Oceanic Watch.Sersi explains to the assembled Avengers what has been happening in more detail. Tony Stark is angry that they kept the danger to Earth a secret. She gives him the standard Eternal reply that it's been their planet much longer than humans have been on it. And they've been charged by the Celestials to look after it. But then she adds a personal note that they are right not to trust her people. Thor broaches his anger too, but Sersi reminds him that *they* were exercising their responsibility when his father Odin was a drunkard. Another Eternal, the ever-young Sprite, pops in to calm things down. She's accompanied by the even younger Avenger Starbrand who she's been keeping amused during the conflict.The Eternal duo meet the others in Celestia to assess the situation. Thanos is gone but their relations with the Avengers have been soured. Now that they know new stuff about the Deviants their scientists may be able to help that race. But Phastos is in the Exclusion Zone (but surely they can now get him out), Gilgamesh has left (as he always does). And now Ikaris gets called away ...... to go see Sophia Robson, the mother of the boy Toby he failed to save. But she only wants to praise him for saving Little Hollow (last issue). He still can't tell her that Toby died to fuel his latest resurrection (#6).In an epilogue Oceanus (the brother of imprisoned Uranos and currently dead Zuras) proposes Druig for the next Prime Eternal. He just saved the planet while bringing Uranos' armoury under their control. They can easily depose him if they don't like what he does. He will provide stability after the things they learned about themselves (from the Celestials' Final Host in the 1st arc of the current Avengers series) and now about the Deviants.Now Druig sits on the throne and thinks that to cement his rule he needs to give the Eternals a purpose again. He asks the Machine to locate areas with large amounts of Deviant DNA. As expected it highlights their city Lemuria. But also the island Krakoa, home to the mutant nation. (It also adds that they've now expanded to Mars.) Druig's face lights up. This is surely an example of Excess Deviation, which the Eternals are programmed to root out.


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Only Death is eternal, part 5
The Eternals' Great Machine continues to give us a 4th-Wall-breaking voiceover. It reminds us that it is spread throughout the world and to a large extent *is* the Earth. Hence the fact that it is currently malfunctioning is causing global problems that are accelerating global warming. It's Resurrection Machine subsystem keeps the Eternals eternal by resurrecting them when they are killed. However that part is now broken which means that the Prime Eternal Zuras and others recently killed by Thanos are for now 'permanently' dead. A Transit subsystem portals Eternals quickly around the globe. The Excluded Titanian Eternal Thanos shouldn't be able to use it, but he *is* successfully doing so to facilitate his killing spree. And the Machine can't detect where he is within the system.Ikaris, Kingo Sunen, Phastos, Sersi and Thena believe that a traitor must be helping Thanos. The prime suspect as always was Druig but he managed to convince them of his innocence. Then he gave them another lead to follow - Thanos is hiding in the Transit system which is a technique used by Gilgamesh and the Forgotten. However after they left him Druig contacted Thanos and *offered* to help him.Now Sersi is having lunch with Tony Stark in New York. It appears that she had previously warned him and Reed Richards about the Great Machine's problem and its affect on the world, but he can report no progress in solving it. Now she confesses that she hadn't been completely truthful with him. She mentally locks down his nervous system while she does what she has to do. She tells him now that Thanos is killing Eternals and she is helping him. She's going to mess with Tony's mind to make Iron Man kill Mr Fantastic, which should keep the Avengers and Fantastic Four busy.But at that point the Forgotten One portals in and grabs her. As he beats her up she calls for Ikaris, who speeds in through a wall like a red and blue blur (Superman, anyone?) and carries the FO away. (The Machine reminds us that Ikaris can see through walls and has never really got to grips with the idea of windows.) Sersi apologises to Tony and says it was all a deception to get the Forgotten One (who Stark knows as ex-Avenger Gilgamesh) to come out of hiding so they could question him about the Machine breakdown. But the Eternals don't want humans to know about Thanos' involvement so before she leaves she tweaks Tony's memory so it seems she claimed that *she* was doing all the bad stuff alone (but he still knows it was all a trick).Now the Machine gives us 1 of those diagram pages explaining the Forgotten, a relatively new Eternal political group (a mere 10,000 years old). They are 4 Eternals who have seceded from the Uni-Mind gestalt so as to act independently to protect humanity from Eternal meddling, with lethal force if necessary. The Forgotten One likes to think of himself as Robin Hood but to the Eternals he's more like the Punisher. The FO was the 1st of the Forgotten and the other 3 allied with him later. They have individual specialisms. Gilgamesh is Heroism. Dumuza is Support/Logistics. Ishta is Underworld Operations. Utunaa is Morale/Intelligence.Ikaris has taken the Forgotten One far from the city to avoid collateral damage as they battle. But it's all a delaying tactic until Kingo and Thena port in with taser-shackles. The Machine's ramblings mention Gilgamesh helping translate the Rosetta Stone, but that's not important now because *this* is ...... Druig and Thanos having a chat in the Transit Network's subdimensional threads where Thanos has been hiding in a loop in the subspace buffer. (Hang on! I thought the Machine said it couldn't detect *where* Thanos was hiding!) Druig had heard that the Forgotten do this, but he doesn't know where they learned how to do it. Or how Thanos learned it. The Titanian Eternal replies that "*We* decided that a blade should strike from the shadows." Druig is astonished that Thanos would consent to being someone's weapon. The Titan reveals a hole in his chest with an artificial heart (or something like that). He says someone saved him from a black hole (the Machine feels somehow compelled to mention Guardians Of The Galaxy (2019) #6, whatever that is, here) and they made a deal, which of course Thanos doesn't expect to be honoured. All he has to do is kill (specified?) Eternals. Druig tries flattery but the Mad Titan says Mephisto did that better (the Machine doesn't mention the Infinity Gauntlet event). So Druig cuts to the chase - he believes he can suggest some options.Sersi has joined the other 3 Eternals in interrogating Gilgamesh, who still thinks she is planning to destroy mankind. She points out that she'd never do that, she enjoys sleeping with them too much. And she explains about the trick to lure him out. Kingo says that 'Gilgy' is an obvious prime suspect for what's going on. He's sabotaged the Resurrection System before (as mentioned last issue) and the Forgotten hide in the Transit system. And his mission is to kill 'bad' Eternals so he might be using Thanos as a weapon. The FO objects that no-one can control Thanos, and anyway he prefers doing the killing himself. Also he just attacked Sersi because he thought *she* was working with Thanos.They accept his arguments but won't let him go until he answers some more questions. They want to know how he disabled the Resurrection Machine before. He tells them that he spent 20,000 years hitting it in various places until he found the spot that worked, but only temporarily. Thena tells the others to release their captive. She knows he is dedicated to the Eternals' 2nd Principle 'Protect The Machine' (even though he extends it to include protecting the Earth and its inhabitants). That very Principle made him rush foolhardedly into the trap they set. But now he points out that the same driving pressure has made *them* make the same mistake, as they are painted with laser dots from guns held by his 3 stealthed compatriots in the surrounding woods. Sersi says she doesn't want to die because she's holding a party at the weekend, and Kingo says he's attending it. Ikaris wonders why the laser dots target the other 3 not him. Gilgamesh says it's because he'll kill Ikaris himself. But he also offers a way to convince them he's innocent.Phastos is in the Reality Loom within the Isolation in the South Polar Exclusion when Sersi contacts him. He says he's found a way to stabilise the Great Machine so that the Earth's climate will settle down, but it's only a temporary fix. And he hasn't had time to do anything about the Resurrection Protocol. She tells him that they are coming to the Isolation with the Forgotten One who's going to show them how *he* previously stopped the Resurrection System. Gilgamesh and his 4 captors enter the Transit system. The other 3 Forgotten stay behind to hunt them down and kill them if they double-cross him. He also asks Ikaris about the boy he's sworn to protect ...... and we look in on Sprite guarding Toby Robson in a park in New York. Sprite has persuaded him to bunk off school because he doesn't normally do that so it will throw anyone who's after him off the scent. The subject turns to death, which apparently Toby thinks about a lot. Sprite says the Eternals *don't* because death is only temporary for them. That's why Ikaris is willing to die to protect him. Toby asks her if she's ever killed anyone and she replies "Oodles". The Machine comments that Sprite used that word to defuse the statement.Time for another diagram, this time of the Exclusion. This houses the Resurrection Machine and enforces the exclusion from its use by the Excluded who are just designated by letters. We already know who some of them are and the 'crimes' that caused their exclusion. U is Uranos for attempted omni-genocide (of all non-Eternals). K is Kronos for auto-deification (which destroyed the city Titanos as a side-effect). A is A'Lars/Mentor and S is his wife Sui-San excluded for unsafe lineage (ie having Thanos as a son). We still don't know who E, H and T are (and Eros and Thanos and other Titanian Eternals are supposedly not in the system at all). But we do now get told that Ur-Luciva is Warden Of The Exclusion and Kharon is Exclusion Security And Transport.We are also told of another purpose of the Exclusion. It contains the Reality Loom where Eternals can interact with the Great Machine. And the Loom is within the Isolation which is where the Forgotten One has taken Ikaris & co. He shows them where he once hit the Machine to stop the Resurrection Protocol. But is surprised to find that section now ripped apart. He wonders how come Phastos hasn't noticed this, especially as he told *him* where the spot was. The others of course now move their focus to Phastos himself.Sersi mentally contacts him again and puts their suspicion to him. We see him with a nose-bleed and mumbling that he just needs more time to save the Machine. Then he cuts the mental link and contacts Thanos and tells him to stop the Eternals who will be coming here. Thena can't believe it. Sersi thinks he probably thinks he has a good reason for what he's doing. The Machine tells us, a bit late, that there was another clue that pointed to Phastos - he was the 1 who taught the Forgotten how to hide in the Transit system, a method now used by Thanos. The 5 Eternals transport to the Loom where Thanos is waiting for them in hiding. And we see Phastos hitting the Machine again with his big 'hammer' saying that he's just destroying the Eternals, not the Earth. The Machine says he's wrong about that.


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A pilgrim's complete lack of progress
The credits page summarises the situation as a long time ago the Celestials came to Earth and created the Eternals and Deviants. But then it adds that "everything since then has been a complete lie". This presumably refers to the Eternals discovering (in #4 of the current Avengers series) that they weren't really put here altruistically to protect the Earth and its inhabitants. Instead they were protecting humans because the Celestials needed them as 'antibodies' against their enemies the Horde. This revelation caused the Eternals to commit mass suicide, from which they have only recently been resurrected (in the current Eternals series). In between the Avengers defeated the Horde.Ajak is particularly badly hit by the change. Her job used to be to communicate with the Celestials but now they have no more use for the Eternals and her. She now sits in Celestia, the city of the star gods, with no gods to worship.Cue a Machine infodump on Celestia. It is 1 of the 6 cities of the Eternals, and in particular is designed to host a visiting Celestial (with an *enormous* chair). There are 6 Priests Of Celestia:-Ajak, keeper of the old ways.Makkari, keeper of the new ways.Harpokratis, keeper of the mysteries.I-Chel, keeper of the skies.Master Elo, keeper of the paths.The Delphan Mother, keeper of the soil.Ajak has been moping around Celestia for weeks when Makkari zips in to see her. They aren't on best of terms because (in the 2006 series) the heretic Dreaming Celestial chose to communicate with Makkari rather than Ajak, which (in the 2008 series) caused Ajak to have Makkari murdered. The previously male pair have both been resurrected as females. And in the intervening weeks Makkari has been trying to contact the dead Dreaming Celestial, which has somehow rendered her deaf, mute and without telepathy so she now communicates with sign language and lip reading.Makkari chides Ajak for brooding. But Ajak wants to know why the space gods are angry with them. Makkari opines that they don't hate the Eternals, they just don't care about them. She urges her to get on with her life, which Ajak interprets as going on a pilgrimage to the corpse of the Progenitor, the 1st Celestial to visit the Earth, which was left with the Avengers at the North Pole. Makkari zooms there and back to report that it's the same as it was. But Ajak points out that the purpose of a pilgrimage is the journey not the arrival. So they both set out to walk there the slow way.While they're doing that we go back 1 million years to a time when Arishem The Judge was sitting on the throne at Celestia and Ajak (apparently female then too) received a command from him. She got the Machine to teleport her to investigate the Avengers of that era:- Agamotto (the 1st Sorceror Supreme), the unnamed 1st Black Panther, Fan Fei (the 1st Iron Fist), Firehair (the 1st human Phoenix), Ghost (the 1st Ghost Rider), Odin (with Mjolnir) and Vnn (the 1st human Starbrand).As our duo walk the world in the present we learn that Makkari has only been a Priest since the Dreaming Celestial spoke to her (and told her of a new covenant). But then various X-Men villains (High Evolutionary, Mr Sinister, Exterminators) at various times cannibalised it for parts, and she can't reanimate it. Ajak thinks the Gods are testing them both, but Makkari thinks they need to learn from all this and go on. They've been walking up the Americas from Celestia in the Andes, blasting through the wall between Mexico and the US, and by now they've reached the snows of Canada.In the past Ajak (looking very much like DC's Big Barda with a funky helmet) tries to talk to the Avengers but Starbrand attacks her. So she calls on the power of the Machine to blast him.Another infodump, this time on the relevant history:-4 billion years ago the Horde-infected Progenitor died on Earth and his disease is the cause of all superpowers.Nothing relevant happened for a long time.1 million years ago a Celestial called Zgreb The Aspirant arrived to find out what happened to Progenitor. He got infected and the 1MBC Avengers killed him. Then the Celestial First Host arrived to investigate what happened to *him*. They fought off the Avengers and recognised the plague infecting the planet. They hoped that this would eventually generate superpowered 'antibodies', and created the Eternals to defend the experiment. (This doesn't explain why they also created the Deviants.)More boring years (but not without more Celestial visits).6 months ago the Final Host arrived, and the Eternals learned the truth and committed suicide.1 month ago the Machine resurrected them all.Back in the past Ajak is struck by Mjolnir. (The Machine explains to us that current Ajak doesn't actually remember this, but she has the event in backup memory storage which can give her a full virtual replay.) She recovers and emits deadly blasts which are also probes to extract data. Then it's Phoenix' turn to respond. Followed by the 'weaker' other 4. Ghost's hellfire chain kills her. But the data she has gathered will survive into her resurrection.While Ajak strokes a polar bear Makkari reviews her recent history. She mourned *her* god the Dreaming Celestial but then learned the truth about the Eternals' role and despaired. Their old gods have abandoned them and her new god has been broken up for spares. They now have no gods. But she once (actually many times) read the story of Frankenstein who made life from parts of the dead, and now she realises they should make their *own* god who can make a new covenant with them. Ajak, possibly diplomatically, says she'll think on it.In 1MBC Ajak awakes in the resurrection chamber. (The Machine comments that a Deviant has just unexpectedly died. From the current Eternals #6 we know what the Eternals didn't that every time 1 of them is reborn it is at the cost of someone else's life.) The Eternals were armed and armoured ready to go to war against the 1MBC Avengers, but she tells them to stand down. She reports that the Avengers have a goal much like their own, to protect the Earth - or what the Eternals call the Machine.Now our duo reach the body of the Celestial called Progenitor and Ajak learns that the Avengers have burrowed into it and turned it into their HQ. To her this is blasphemy and she gets very angry. Ghost Rider comes out to see what all the shouting is about. He explains that the Celestials told him personally that this is what they wanted (see Avengers #8). Ajak reads his mind and discovers it's true. But the fact that the Celestials spoke to GR and not *her* ticks her off even more. She's about to annihilate him when Makkari whisks her 100 miles away.The pair now do an Eternal trick (which I don't think we've ever seen before) of each splitting their mind in 2. In 1 compartment they debate (untelepathic Makkari allows Ajak access to  her consciousness), with the other they use their bodies to fight. Makkari tries to run away but Ajak traps them both in a subspace bubble which gradually contracts to force the speedster into range of her fists. Makkari keeps darting in to wear her opponent down with micro-blows, but she knows she hasn't got time to win this way. She pins her hopes on the debate.Ajak says she can't stand by and let the Avengers defile a space god. Makkari points out that she witnessed *her* space god desecrated by X-foes so she sympathises. But she claims that as Priests of the Celestials it is their job to bear it. And Ajak stops throttling her.Makkari now asks her friend if she will join in her plan to build their own god. But Ajak is even more convinced that this is a test. In her experience the Celestials always speak enigmatically, and it is the Priests' job to interpret their sayings. The plain statement they gave to Ghost Rider won't be what they actually meant. She now realises it was a mistake to let the 1MB Avengers live.Machine ends the issue with a clarifying statement. Ajak plans to go to war against the Avengers. Makkari plans to create a new god out of parts of old Celestials. This won't end well.