Makkari
Eternity was a long time. There was a reason they called themselves Eternals, and even among her team, Makkari was different. That word eternal had more weight and meaning, for when you lived in a world where things moved at a fraction of your speed, eternity became a chore.
The wind whipped her hair back, and her jacket turned cape behind her as she raced her way through Europe.
The others could never understand. Oh, they felt it in their own different ways even if they tried to hide it. Sprite suffered it the most with her inability to blend in with the world for a long time. Ikaris with his inability to stay still, to simply live without his soul aching for conflict and violence. Kingo and his thirst for attention and worship. Druig... with his need and desire to have control over everything around him. Phastos with his compulsive desire to help, and Sersi with her dying need to be human.
She discarded thoughts of Thena and Gilgamesh. Two opposite sides of the same coin, one violence unrestrained, and the other, well-controlled strength. It was no wonder they balanced each other.
Yet above them all was Ajak, and she was the only one that hid her peculiarities the best. She hid it so well that not even Makkari with her enhanced perception had been able to spot it. Still, there had to be something because more than any other, Makkari had seen her slump when the others weren't watching. Her shoulders hanging low like she carried a weight unknown to them.
Lost in her thoughts, she still managed to deftly navigate her way from the urban city she had been passing through when the storm started. She felt it in the earth before she saw it in the sky. A vibration that quickly settled, then suddenly the weather changed from a regular day, at least by the accounts of the beautiful nation of Norway, to something darker.
The clouds covered the sky and snow fell in large clumps that turned the world to white in moments. Makkari knew this was something strange. This was no simple freak weather. Something had happened. She just didn't know what.
She had come to Norway because she loved the beautiful scenery and landscape. The fjords, the mountains, the way the light played across the snow in winter. It was one of the few places on Earth where she could almost feel still, where the world seemed vast enough to contain her restlessness.
Then she saw the body wrapped in lightning falling like a star.
It streaked across the sky like a meteor, trailing arcs of electricity that spider-webbed through the storm clouds. The first thing in its way had been a snow-capped mountain, and when the body clipped it, it destroyed half of it and kept hurtling down with barely any reduction in speed.
It took clipping another three before it slowed, and when it finally kissed the ground in the far distance, the impact was tremendous, shaking the earth hard enough that even at her speed and the distance, Makkari felt the vibration travel up through her legs, forcing her to lower her center of gravity or be thrown away. A crater appeared in the snow-covered field ahead, steam rising from superheated earth.
She should've turned away as was her directive. Other than dealing with the Deviants, the Eternals were to leave the humans to their problems. They were to fight their own battles. That was the order Ajak had given them. It was an order they had followed religiously. An order that had made them sit back and watch an alien invasion. An order that had nearly seen a country destroyed. In summary, it was a tiresome order.
But most especially, what influenced her decision was because Makkari was bored.
She shifted, changing direction with a tilt of her body, and raced toward the location where the figure had dropped. The world slowed around her as she accelerated, snowflakes hanging in the air like suspended crystals, each one unique and perfect and utterly still from her perspective.
The crater was massive, easily thirty feet across, and at its center lay a figure.
At first, she didn't recognize him. The body was too broken, too battered. Burns covered most of the visible skin, the kind of wounds that came from severe physical trauma. One arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. Blood, red and very human-looking, pooled beneath him, already freezing in the strange snowstorm that had come to life.
Then she saw the hammer, held tightly in the intact arm, its jeweled hand gripping its shaft despite the brutal fall. Mjolnir. She'd know that weapon anywhere, would recognize it even after a thousand years. The inscriptions along its head, the worn leather of its grip, the way it seemed to hum with barely contained power even while at rest.
Which meant the broken figure in the crater was Thor.
Makkari stepped closer, her enhanced perception taking in every detail. He looked different from how she remembered. The last time she'd seen him had been in 965 AD, when the Eternals had participated in the Battle of Tonsberg in Norway, siding with the Asgardians when the Frost Giants invaded Earth. It was one of the few times they had participated in a non-Deviant attack, and that was because they had been residing in Norway that period.
Back then, Thor had been a young man, brash, and full of that arrogant confidence that came with being a prince and a warrior. He'd fought like a storm given form, laughing as he brought Mjolnir down on Frost Giant after Frost Giant.
This Thor looked... significantly different. He was bigger for one. His red hair was matted with blood, yet the shade of his hair was so deep, she could hardly spot where his hair began and the blood ended. His revealed arms had blue Nordic tattoos wrapped around the limbs. If not for the hammer, she would've thought herself mistaken, yet she knew for a certainty that this was Thor, which brought the question.
What could do this to a god?
She knelt beside him and turned his body over, her hand hovering over his chest. She could feel the faint vibration of his heartbeat, slow and irregular but still there. He was alive, but badly hurt. Without help, he might not stay that way for long.
Makkari bit her lip, weighing her options.
The smart thing, the obedient thing, would be to leave him here. She still had her reservations, but if this was truly Thor, even if he wasn't the young Thor she knew, then he was still Asgardian. His people would come for him eventually, or he would heal on his own as gods tended to do. This wasn't her problem, wasn't her responsibility.
But she'd fought beside him once. Had seen him defend Earth like it was his own realm. And despite the directive, despite Ajak's orders, despite everything they'd been told about non-interference...
She couldn't just leave him here to die in the snow.
"Ajak is going to kill me," Makkari signed to herself, even though there was no one to see it.
Then she reached down and carefully, so carefully, lifted Thor's broken body into her arms. He was heavy, far heavier than a human of his immense size should be. Asgardian density, she remembered. Their bodies were far more compact, more durable than human flesh.
She was forced to carry him in a fireman's carry, and even with that, her feet sank into the snow and his arms trailed low. She could hardly cradle his immense bulk despite his injuries. The only thing she could do was try to get him to Ajak before he died on her.
She shifted into a sprinter's stance, cosmic energy bubbling in her veins and enhancing her musculature as everything slowed. Then she burst into motion, near disappearing from sight with only a trail of gold behind her that was rapidly fading.
The world blurred around her as she accelerated, snow and landscape becoming a white-and-green smear. She knew where Ajak was staying. The older Eternal had taken up residence in a small homestead in South Dakota, living among humans as she often did, tending to their wounds and ailments like some kind of saint.
It would take Makkari only minutes to get there, even accounting for Thor's bulk and the ocean crossing.
Behind her, in the crater she'd left behind, the heavy snowstorm continued to fall, covering the evidence of the impact. And a few minutes after Makkari disappeared in a sonic boom that rattled trees for miles, Iron Man arrived at an empty crater.
And in South Dakota, Ajak looked up from her garden as she felt the approach of one of her own, moving far faster than usual. She set down her trowel, brushed the dirt from her hands, and prepared herself for whatever crisis Makkari was about to bring to her doorstep.
Because when Makkari moved that fast, it was never good news.
__
Thunder rumbled in my ear. Lightning came to life in my veins. A roar. Then the Jotunn's eyes exploded under my fist.
I felt the wet pop of it, felt the vitreous fluid splash across my knuckles as I drove my hand deeper into the skull, crushing bone and brain matter with a grip that could shatter mountains, before ripping my hand out to give space for my second fist. The giant was already dead, had been dead since the second blow, but I kept hitting. Kept crushing. Kept destroying.
Because that's what I did. That's what I was made for.
Around me, this little enclave of the Jotnar on Midgard burned.
The settlement had become a slaughterhouse, and I was the butcher. Bodies littered the frozen wasteland, dozens of them, hundreds maybe. I'd lost count hours ago. Or was it days? Time had ceased to have meaning somewhere between the third village and the seventh, somewhere between the screaming children and the pleading mothers.
"Thor." A woman's voice called, distant and hollow. "Thor, they're surrendering."
I turned to look at her, my hands still buried in giant flesh, and saw the horror in her eyes. Not horror at the giants. Horror at me.
"Good," the words escaped from my lips in a thunderous rumble. "Then they can watch."
I snapped my fingers, and Mjolnir came running like a well-trained dog. The hammer flew through the air with a crack of thunder. Lightning danced along its length, eager, hungry for more destruction as it burst through a running Jotun. This one was smaller, almost shaped like a man.
The rest of the surrendering giants knelt in the snow, their heads bowed, their weapons cast aside. There were maybe a dozen of them left from a population of almost a hundred. Old ones. Young ones. Warriors who had thrown down their swords. Farmers who had never held a blade. They came in different shapes, some as big as the chieftain I had killed, others as small as any man.
Yet, it didn't matter, not to me. They were giants. They had scorned my father, and he had sent me against them. It did not matter that I reveled in the violence, nor did the nightmares that plagued my sleep and the drinks I used to dull the cries of mothers and children. The only thing that mattered was fulfilling my duty as the right hand of Odin.
I looked upon their conquered forms, my hand snapping up in time to catch Mjolnir. The meaty thwack of the hammer slamming into my arm made the kneeling giants shiver, then for a second, my hand lowered.
"Kill them all, you brutish lout." Odin's voice rang in my head, and my features hardened at once. My hand came up, lightning coating my hammer, and I could see the fear and horror on the faces of the Jotnar before me. A boy barely past his first decade. Another memory to drown under mead.
I swung down, just as a fist crashed into my jaw, sending my body flying. I broke through at least four trees before I came to a stop, and with a grunt, I lifted myself up from the crater I found myself in. I shook my head, trying to clear it when I heard the footsteps. Turning to the side, I saw him. Lanky, yet his muscles were compact and tight. He was tall, one of the few that could force me to tilt my head up to look at him. His gold eyes shone with unshed tears, sorrow lining his face.
"You do not have to continue like this, Thor. I know it is hard, but you can free yourself from Odin's grip." Tyr. The God of War said, his words pleading. Beseeching. But he did not understand. Nobody could. I did not have a choice. This was my sole purpose in life.
"Do not waste your breath, Tyr." I spat blood to the side, and I grinned. "You only need show me why my father bestowed upon you that title."
I could see it in his eyes the moment he realized he could not get through to me. The sheer utter sadness, and the hardening of his features that followed as he understood. He would have to kill me to stop me. To stop Odin. Good. I wanted nothing more, and with a roar of frustration and rage, I hurled myself toward him.
I woke up with a roar.
"Peace, God of Thunder." A woman said beside me, her voice old but soothing, but I had no ear for it. Not when my heart beat with battle.
A hand tried to push me down, and I gripped it before flinging the arm alongside the owner away with a surge of strength. There was a crash as something broke. Electric blue eyes snapped open and I threw myself from my back to my feet just in time to catch a strong blow aimed at my jaw, instinct and lightning fueling my movement.
I looked into the face of my attacker and froze.
"Makkari?" My eyes widened in recognition at the mute woman from the Eternals.
Then I felt a touch on my back, and once more I was thrown into unconsciousness. Into another battle, a slaughter perpetuated by my very hands.