Chapter 322. Mahd Wy'ry
To the Eternals, beings forged from the very fabric of cosmic permanence, the concept of "illness" was supposed to be a foreign tongue. Their bodies were not temples of flesh and bone, but sophisticated constructs of energy and matter, immune to the microscopic invaders—viruses, bacteria, and decay—that plagued the mortal race.
Yet, there existed a shadow in their perfection: a psychological erosion known as Mahd Wy'ry. It was a cruel, incurable affliction of the soul, a rot that the Eternals had failed to mend despite seven thousand years of wandering the stars.
A victim of the Mahd Wy'ry lived in a state of fragile peace, until the slightest spark—a stray memory, a sudden noise, a flash of conflict—sent them spiraling into a fugitive madness. Their mind would fracture, drowning in the echoes of a thousand lifetimes, and they would lash out with terrifying, god-like power at anything that moved.
By some dark twist of fate, it was Thena, the greatest warrior of their ten-man cell, who had been claimed by this silent predator.
The history of her decline was a tragic one. Centuries ago, when the team was still stationed in the golden spires of ancient Babylon, they had watched as humanity tore itself apart. It was a war of petty greeds and ancient grudges, a meat-grinder of bronze and blood. Some of the Eternals, their hearts softened by the people they lived among, begged to intervene. They could have ended the slaughter in a single afternoon.
But their mandates were absolute. They were the shields against the Deviants, and nothing more. To interfere in human politics or warfare was to defy the will of the Celestials. They were ordered to be ghosts in the machine of history, silent sentinels watching as empires rose in glory and fell in ash.
The sheer, agonizing weight of that forced helplessness had been the catalyst. During a particularly brutal human skirmish, Thena's mind had finally snapped. Lost in the "Mahd Wy'ry," she became a storm of golden blades, a goddess of slaughter who nearly ended Ajak's life before the others could pin her down.
In those early days, the episodes were brief. Thena had returned to herself, weeping in the arms of her comrades as their pleas pulled her back from the brink.
However, Ajak's solution to the problem had been a cold one. To protect the mission—and the lives of the other Eternals—she had proposed a total memory wipe. She wanted to scour Thena's mind clean, erasing the centuries of trauma that were fueling the fire.
The others had seen it as a mercy, but Ajak knew the darker truth. In the scrolls of cosmic lore, Mahd Wy'ry was spoken of as a curse, but the reality was far more technical. It was a "cache" error. The Celestials, in their infinite and often indifferent wisdom, wiped the Eternals' memories after every planetary mission. But the process wasn't perfect. Fragments remained—ghosts of dead worlds, echoes of lost lovers, and the screams of civilizations long extinguished.
Noah looked upon the Celestials with a certain level of disdain. They were cosmic architects who lacked a quality control department. In their quest to birth a new god, they had created the Deviants—predators that evolved so quickly they began devouring the very life force needed for the Celestial's birth. And their solution to the Eternals' mental stability was equally flawed, leaving their greatest soldiers to go mad under the pressure of un-erased eons.
This was the true nature of Mahd Wy'ry: the mind simply running out of room.
Ajak's proposal had been the breaking point for the group. Druig, the brooding telepath who could command entire armies with a thought, had finally had enough. He was disgusted by the hypocrisy of their "non-interference" while their own kind were being lobotomized for the sake of a mission they no longer believed in.
He had walked away, using his powers to freeze two warring armies in their tracks one last time before vanishing into the shadows of history.
Seeing the fellowship shattered, Ajak had officially disbanded the team. She allowed them to scatter to the four corners of the Earth, giving them these final few centuries before the Emergence to live as they saw fit.
Gilgamesh and Thena had chosen each other. Their bond was deep, a quiet, enduring romance that mirrored the fiery passion of Ikaris and Sersi, though they lacked the human inclination for formal vows. Perhaps, in the solitude of the desert, they had held a ceremony of their own, witnessed only by the stars.
As the centuries passed and Thena's condition worsened, Gilgamesh had carried her into the deep heart of the Australian desert. He became her guardian, her anchor, and her cook, building a life in the emptiness where she could scream at the ghosts of the past without harming a soul.
…
As Noah and Ajak touched down, the dry sand crunched beneath their boots. Before them stood a modest, hand-built dwelling—a testament to Gilgamesh's immense strength and surprising patience.
"The Deviants... I didn't think they would have found their way even here," Ajak whispered, her voice tight with alarm.
Noah followed her gaze. Scattered across the crimson dunes like discarded husks were the massive, rotting carcasses of several Deviants. These were different from the lupine creatures Noah had slaughtered before; they were bulkier, more mutated, clearly a different strain awakened by the "Second Breath" of the world's energy.
"Can they track you?" Noah asked, his hand drifting toward the hilt of his weapon. "This desert is a continent wide. Finding two people in this much sand isn't luck."
"I don't know," Ajak admitted, her head shaking slowly. "We have hunted them for millions of years, yet they still find ways to surprise us."
Beyond the corpses, Noah spotted a lone figure in white sitting beneath the skeletal limbs of a dead tree. The woman sat perfectly still, her head bowed, radiating a sense of profound, heavy silence.
It was Thena. Given the fresh state of the Deviant remains, she had likely just finished a frantic, bloody defense. She was almost certainly still lost in the throes of the Mahd Wy'ry.
Deciding it was better not to startle a literal goddess of war in the middle of a psychotic break, Noah veered toward the heavy wooden door of the main house.
"We are here. Knock," Noah prompted.
Ajak nodded, her hand rising to the wood, but the door swung open before she could touch it.
Standing in the threshold was Gilgamesh. He was a mountain of a man, his chest broad and his arms like gnarled oak beams. He had felt the shift in the air, the arrival of powerful signatures, and with Thena in her current state, he wasn't taking any chances.
His defensive posture evaporated the moment he saw Ajak.
"Hey! Ajak! As I live and breathe!" Gilgamesh roared, a grin splitting his rugged face. He stepped forward and swept her into a bone-crushing hug that would have flattened a mortal man.
"Gilgamesh, it has been far too long," Ajak laughed softly, patting his massive back with genuine affection.
"Ajak, what in the world brings you to this dust bowl? And who is...?" Gilgamesh trailed off as he pulled back, his sharp eyes finally landing on the stranger standing in his yard.
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