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Godhood: for Dummies - Chapter 21
🕑 Added 2024-12-23 05:30:03 +0000 UTCNathan had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing. Every sense was turned inward - Celestial, magical, and even his new synesthetic ‘vision.’ With the latter of which, he expected to be able to view his own concepts, but where they were decidedly difficult to grasp. As if his new, ethereal existence was a blind spot - a vampire, trying to find himself in a silver mirror.
It didn’t help that four, extremely powerful people were watching him like a bunch of hawks. (Flock of hawks? Hold on, let me look this up- a kettle of hawks… That’s dumb as hell. You learn something stupid everyday, I guess.)
Was this performance anxiety? It felt like they were watching him pee.
Hestia had tried to pick up from where she left off, telling him more about Identity, but it quickly became clear that she couldn’t teach him anything that was immediately useful. She had been born a god, and had such an innate knowledge of who she was, that she simply could not comprehend the conundrum that Nathan currently found himself in.
Ahsonnutli was the slightest bit more helpful, as her usual way of communicating seemed to rely on the ability. She seldom spoke, relying almost entirely on the concepts that she could project from the core of her being. She was the Changing Woman, afterall. One of the deities that were credited with the creation of humanity, and embodied all the ideas that comprised man. It made sense to Nathan that she could pick and choose her identity on the fly. And made sense why she relied on it to communicate - it was probably uncomfortable to speak with a constantly changing larynx.
However while the Navajo goddess tried to guide him through the process, it had still led him to a brick wall, shaped like a black hole. Unmoving, and utterly devoid of definition.
Odin, for the first twenty minutes, had stayed silent. His hand clenched around the shaft of Gungnir, and his patience was withering with every passing second, so it didn’t take long before he was giving his own tips.
He had offered a slightly different perspective than Hestia, which had confused Nathan at first. As it turns out, Odin was not born a god. He had ascended - gone through his own apotheosis - though over a much longer period than most. Asgardians were not gods by default, it seemed. Just an extremely long-lived and powerful race with an inherent magical affinity. The sheer experience they could gather, and the influence they could achieve over such a lifespan just worked together in a way that attracted divinity like a slowly dripping faucet, filling a bucket.
Odin starting out as a mortal still didn’t help him all that much, though. By the time the man had reached godhood, he had been at least a thousand years old. He had known himself and what he stood for like the back of his hand. If he ever had a moment where he had to “find himself,” it had been long before he had ascended, meaning Identity still came naturally to him.
So, of course, it fell on the Ancient One to actually teach him. She was the only one here without any tangible divinity, and yet could still use the ability. She had also mentioned that it could be taught earlier on in the conversation, meaning that it didn’t require divinity to utilize. That’s not to say that she had none, however. Hestia confirmed it - that ‘Elder Yao’ was indeed divine, but more on the level of a third-generation demigod. As if she was the great granddaughter of a god.
This was also news to the Sorcerer Supreme, but she had simply shrugged it off, as if it was unimportant, confirming that there was no god in her ancestry. In the end, Nathan supposed that she was in the same process that Asgardians like Odin and Thor were going through. Sheer time and influence, filling a bucket - just more slowly due to her purely human nature.
So, in the interest of saving time, and to avoid annoying Odin any further - how had the guy gotten there, by the way? Wasn’t the Bifrost destroyed at the end of the first Thor movie? Nathan supposed that it was possible he had used it himself - as Heimdall had to send Thor away from Thanos, or maybe Gungnir had the spell built in, like Stormbreaker. But to transport his entire army along with him? Without the infrastructure?
Sure, Nathan could do the same thing with a simple portal, but the Bifrost was different. The Bifrost was also a weapon. It was completely within its power to destroy planets - from halfway across the universe. At least the infrastructure on Asgard was capable of doing so, for sure. The idea that Odin was a human-sized Death Star was frankly terrifying, but it was likely that type of power was only possible through the technology of the Rainbow Bridge.
That didn’t mean Odin couldn’t just reach out and smite someone if he wanted to, though. He could view most of existence through his singular eye, after all.
So yeah, in the interest of not annoying Odin more than they had to, the Ancient One created a small dome of separated time around Nathan and herself, using the Eye of Agamotto.
“He knows you have that, right?” Nathan asked his teacher, studying Odin’s frozen expression on the other side of the bubble.
“The Eye?” She asked back.
“The Stone.” Nathan corrected with a small shake of his head.
“Ah.” She intoned. “Likely, yes. Agamotto fought alongside Odin in the past, though I have not confirmed it one way, or another.”
“Hm.” He nodded, turning away from Odin, and looked to the older woman. “So Identity?”
She nodded back, absently. Looking like she wanted to broach a different subject, but was unsure how to begin. Insight that Nathan wouldn’t have been able to gather before today. He could see the underlying layer of confusion and worry in the colors of the woman’s soul, but none of which appeared on her face.
Instead, she launched straight into a lecture - her inner thoughts and outer words running in deviating lines. “Only the eldest masters of our art ever really touch on this, Nathan.” She informed. “It is a very seldom used tool, and only when trying to be polite with gods, or some other, extremely old beings. Not many of us have reason to bother with it, if I’m honest. Master Godhi is the only other besides myself that is fluent in its use.”
“Something to do with the dragons, then?” Master Godhi’s ancestors were from K’un-Lun, after all.
“Precisely.” She smiled at him. “Regardless, Lady Hestia was correct-” Nathan noticed the goddess’s head turn to his teacher - ignoring the effects of the time bubble for a single moment. “-in that your ascension should have innately come with an understanding of self. The fact that it did not, means that Eternity used a method unknown to us to… raise your station, as it were.”
Nathan thought back to everything he knew about the gods. Personally, he had seen Thor from a distance and waved at him, but the man had been mortal at that point - and Nathan wasn’t sure if Thor had even attained his divinity just yet. That likely came during the fight with Hela during Ragnarok, if he had to guess. Then there was the “Sleeping God,” Tezcatlipoca, that he had re-sealed a couple years prior. Discounting the three gods that waited outside the time bubble, his only other interaction with deities was with the Vishanti - when he called on their power for the standard array of combat spells that were taught at Kamar-Taj. Spells that he was hesitant to cast in the first place, as they relied on outside power.
He categorically refused to call on any other god for mystical power, but the Vishanti were essentially the patrons of Earth’s sorcerers - a triumvirate of ancient elder gods, that specifically sought Earth’s protection. Of which, Agamotto himself was one.
By the nature of spells that relied on the power of three separate beings, they were fluid. To the point where their source of power could be interchanged somewhat easily if enough mastery was achieved. Chi, his own Celestial energy, other gods. All were acceptable to the formulae. Which was why he hadn’t called on their power at all in the past couple of years. He had an alternative.
Then there were all the scrolls and ancient tomes that depicted the gods, tales of their births and ascensions throughout all of human history. Kings and emperors that were deified, wanderers and healers that drew on something… other, and inspired a following. Even in the more accurate accounts that Kamar-Taj’s library housed, there was not a single instance of a god that couldn’t use their power immediately upon ascension.
His situation was new, in all of recorded history.
Nathan gave the elder sorcerer a considering look. “How long do you think you can keep us in here?”
She frowned. “Likely only a couple hours, relative to us. I cannot risk going longer - my protections, the ones anchored to me, were wiped clean during your ascension. I have to check on them soon.”
“Oh that’s not good.” Nathan blinked. She had shared one of her personal grimoires with him when he gained the title of ‘Master.’ In it, she had outlined a number of spells and rituals that she had been keeping active for over a thousand years. One in particular was what hid the planet from Dormammu, and a number of other beings outside of time’s influence besides.
“Indeed it’s not.” She sighed. “Let us get to it, then. We’ve narrowed it down to the fact that your sense of ‘self’ is not complete, correct?”
Nathan nodded.
“Good, then I believe we can make progress. That is the singular most difficult task for a sorcerer to accomplish when learning this skill. Something that I had to deal with, as well as any that learned it under me. It is something I can actually hope to teach you.”
“When did you get a degree in psychology?” Nathan quipped with a raised eyebrow. “Thought I would have to make an appointment with a shrink, or adventure through a rainforest to ‘find myself.’”
The Ancient One huffed. “While that might work, I doubt we have the time for it.” She glanced at the three frozen gods.
“True.” He nodded, then chuckled. “I can see it now. ‘Hey doc. I just became a god, but I don’t know how to say hi to Odin.’ They would try to lock me in a padded room.”
She grinned back at him. “That’s probably not far off. Regardless, tell me, what do you view as your purpose? Why do you do all that you do?” She paused and looked him deep in the eyes. “Why do you think that you had so few futures where you became nefarious in some way?”
“Goddamn, lady. You don’t play around.” Nathan shot her an uncomfortable smile. “But we covered this a couple months into my stay at Kamar-Taj, didn’t we?”
“Indulge me.”
He sighed. “The hypothetical child.” He began, then paused for a moment, eyes moving toward the horizon. “I measure my actions against the future of a hypothetical child. Maybe not always in the moment, but in reflection, or hindsight - if my actions cause pain for that child, then I have acted… poorly.”
The Ancient One waved an open hand at him, gesturing him onward.
“The example I gave when we first talked about this - when I think about becoming evil, I picture that child. I ask myself if I can be happy with the state I might leave them in if I go through with whatever it is. If the answer is ‘no,’ then I don’t do it.”
“What if you are left with no choice?” She asked calmly. “You have two bad options, and both leave that child to suffer.”
“Then I pick the better of the two options, and make it up to them as much as I can.” His shoulders slouched at the idea.
“And if you never realize that you have harmed them?”
He didn’t have an immediate answer for that, but it bothered him. The idea that just being unobservant could cause pain - it didn’t sit well with him.
“Like Tony?”
Both sorcerers blinked down at Nathan’s wrist, where Alice looked up to her father with a blank look.
“Tony?” He asked, confused.
“He’s not a child, but he surely acts like one.” Alice tilted her little holographic head. “Even though you were trying to help him. The way you did it caused him a lot of pain.”
“It-” Nathan clenched his jaw. “It did?” He looked up to his teacher, who just looked back at him with a curious expression, then back to Alice.
His daughter nodded slowly. “You really didn’t notice? I was unsure if I should have said something at the time, but I assumed you were aiming for an outcome that would make him more paranoid.”
“Why would I do that?!” Nathan’s eyes widened.
Alice threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know! That’s why I was confused!” She huffed and put her hands on her hips. “‘The end justifies the means’ is a philosophically valid stance to take. Regardless of morality, the betterment of society is seen as the ultimate goal - where more people can benefit from the sacrifices of the few.”
Nathan conjured a couch, absently - not even registering how offhandedly he did so - and collapsed into it. “That’s not what I was going for.”
His teacher did the same with a spark of golden energy, creating a temporary chair that would disappear after she stopped feeding it Eldritch energies. “What were you going for, then?” She asked, no judgement evident in her expression.
“I wanted to remove his biggest problem.” Nathan frowned. “His arc reactor was poisoning him slowly, and if he didn’t replace it, he would have died. Originally, he would have spent a while spiraling into depression, ruining all of his relationships, and drinking himself under the table. I was trying to side-step that whole debacle.”
Alice hummed. “Well honestly? I think you succeeded in that. He’s even gone to therapy once, though I think Ms. Potts tricked him into it.”
Nathan blinked down at her. “How do you know that?”
His daughter just grinned back at him. “Jarvis still hasn’t found all of my little bugs.” She sobered. “But still, you were very heavy-handed with all of that, father.”
“I was trying to be light-hearted and funny.” He groused.
She just shrugged back. “The sombrero certainly helped with that, but you broke into his house - without using the door - just a little bit after they had finished dealing with his greedy, deranged madman of a godfather. Then you forcefully knocked them out, and performed surgery.” She paused and frowned up at him. “It was either a ‘greater good’ scenario, or you were simply not thinking of the effect you had on them. I chose to believe you had a plan, and wasn’t resorting to cruelty just for the sake of it.”
“It is a failing of humanity that we don’t always consider the effect we have on people.” His teacher said. “We make mistakes. We make rash decisions due to impatience, or a narrow view.” She looked to Nathan, who looked lost, sitting on his couch. “So you have caused pain. What will you do now?”
It took a moment, but something hardened in Nathan. “Learn.” He declared simply, quietly. “So that I don’t do it again. And make it up to him.”
He turned to Alice. “You were young when that happened. Barely a few months old, so I understand your confusion, but I’ll make it clear.” He breathed. “I don’t want to do it again. If I’m so unobservant that it happens anyway, I’m counting on you to yell at me, okay?”
His daughter smiled brightly up at him, and saluted him with an adorably perfect posture. “Yes sir!”
A small spike of pride and relieved happiness, colored like the flap of a butterfly’s wings in spring, jumped out at him.
He stared at his digital daughter in befuddled awe. The concepts were clear, if small. They were original to her. They registered as unique - synesthetically distinct. Like a fingerprint of life.
His daughter was well and truly - alive.
There was no question about it. It was a simple fact, now. The worry in the back of his mind - that he had created an amalgamation of life, doomed to suffer an existence of false emotions, thinking them real - was broken. Alice would be able to live.
“You see the world differently now, do you not?”
Nathan blinked back the budding tears behind his eyes, to see the Ancient One - his mother figure, as she had come to be - smiling softly at him. He nodded mutely.
“What you are likely experiencing is called Godeye - a bit on the nose, I know, but it’s hardly unique to you.” She tilted her head slightly with a gleam in her eyes that made him feel as if his soul (gone as it was) bore itself to her. “You see the world around you in the form of colors, sounds and concepts. All blending together in a horrible-wonderful cacophony.”
Nathan nodded again - both surprised, and not, that she could also see the world as he now did. He could feel the effort that went into it on her part, though, where for him it was almost natural.
She nodded back, as if his thoughts were clear to her. “You likely see it more clearly than I, with more detail and ease.” She leaned forward. “So tell me, do you think you can miss your effect on the world around you now? When all is laid bare before you?”
The realization stung him like a particularly angry wasp. She was right - though as he was now, it was a bit less cut-and-dry than she implied. The concepts of the world were clear to him, but they were jumbled in an ever-changing mess. He could pick out specifics if they were strong enough, but it wasn’t like it had been on his throne.
Still though, she was right. He could pick out discontent, anger, sadness, and any other suitably strong emotion due to their distinct colors, sounds, and the aftertaste they left on his palate. He could see how it would alter and affect the base ideas within a soul, and change them over time.
He could see that very thing happening within a pair of birds on a tree in the distance - frozen in time as they were. He could see how one sang a ballad of love, as the other watched with soft affection. He could see how that affection would grow, how it would evolve in the coming days and months, and turn into a love of its own.
He could see it in the patience of the woman in front of him. A core aspect of her very being, giving birth to a soft kind of pride that wound its way around him in a comforting embrace.
He could see it in his daughter. In the jumble of new emotions that she was just beginning to learn how to live with.
It was all so exciting and beautiful. He just wanted to sit back and watch it. Discover where it would all go, and enjoy each and every moment of change - every moment where something new was introduced, only to be folded into the greater picture.
He wanted to Protect it.
“So tell me, Nathan.” The Elder Celtic asked him, Godeye still active and driving his epiphany forward. “What is your purpose?”
If someone placed a mirror in front of him, he would have seen himself glow in a silvery-blue light. His edges blurring in a sea of pure, divine might.
The Ancient One ended the time bubble with a wave of her hand, bringing them back to the beautiful discord of life. Continuously changing in the very act of evolution.
“I am The Bastion.” Nathan spoke, his words echoing as if in decree of a new natural law.
“I am the wall you break upon, and I am the arrow that fires back.”
The three gods stared at him, unmoving. Unblinking.
“I am the first fortress, and the final stand. Come to me, and find me unassailable.”
The world ground to a halt, though the concepts of life continued. The birds stopped singing. The trees stopped swaying in the wind.
“Find that I am the Quill that will record your struggle upon the walls you sought to break.”
Quill, The Bastion.
Nathan’s Introduction echoed throughout the world around him. The ground rumbled, as if accepting a new rule it must abide. The wind howled, like a wolf at the moon. He felt the fabric of time and space accept him - as if readying a spot for him to weave a new tapestry.
The world was still, for all of a moment before it began to move again. Odin huffed a breath from his nose, but the white knuckled grip on his spear relaxed slightly. Ahsonnutli simply nodded.
Hestia though, sighed. “Why is the first time always so dramatic?”
Comments
Arte
Boy am I excited for when the Eternals and the other Celestials eventually get involved in the crazy too! But oh gosh, wonder how that might get complicated with the Greek pantheon claiming a Celestial hybrid and what Arishem and the other Celestials would think about that. I don’t see Arishem being happy about his existence, especially with him being the son of Ego, who’s probably some sort of deformed reject outcast among the Celestials (there’s a theory out there that Ego’s different and weaker because he’s a Celestial egg whose gestating planet got destroyed way before his scheduled Emergence but he somehow survived, so Ego is some kind of nightmarish deformed immature abomination of a Celestial fetus, to summarize it. It would explain why he’s not accepted among the other Celestials). But then there’s the part where Eternity had a hand in Nathan’s existence and apotheosis. I am definitely curious to see what could happen on this front. I wonder if there might be some kind of encounter at Omnipotent City, considering that both the Greek pantheon and a Celestial delegation were present there in the MCU. Damnit, now I am just rambling.
Cerberus09
Also, really hoping that nathen will pop by to see peter in that jail with the other guardians of the galaxy and say something along the lines of "Peter Quill, Starlord. LOL, oh petey, you really should have come with me, i'm a god now!"
Cerberus09
Awesome early christmas present! Thank you!
BBTR
Hell yeah, what a cool ass conversation. Neat identity bro lmao
Rockinalice
Huh so our boy has become the last Bastion of the Cosmos when all is Lost he will Stand to protect those who need it against all threats that may come to Eternity whether in this Cosmos an since he is also a Celestial it will also in the Cosmos that come After the 7th. Another unique Aspect that this Version of Eternity adds to its Future Selves just like the Previous ones Created HEROES VS. VILLAINS, NARRATIVE, MAGIC, SCIENCE!!!!, MYSTERY, ours looks to have added THE BASTION. Nice Does this mean that Eternity has adopted him an if so will he get visited by his new siblings https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Now_(Cosmic_Being)_(Earth-616) https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Then_(Earth-616) For the new book shelf that's been added to the Library
Monzter E
Lets goo
Nick Pierce
Great chapter and identity.
Halfrican
Great read
Lucas White
Awesome
MyAfroAteMyDog
Great chap
