Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This issue opens in a New York skyscraper restaurant where Tony Stark has invited Sersi of the Eternals for lunch. He asks her why the Eternals and Avengers are going to be fighting each other soon. She responds that her people are more likely to fight the mutants who have recently learned how to do the Eternals' resurrection thing. But the meeting was actually just a ploy to get her out in the open, and now Phoenix (Maya Lopez) zooms in to take Sersi into the sky to meet Captain Marvel and Thor.
Elsewhere in NY in the Treehouse, the X-Men's current base and the Krakoan consulate, Cyclops and Marvel Girl watch Phoenix' flight with mixed feelings considering the battle the Avengers and X-Men once fought over the Phoenix Force (the Avengers Vs X-Men event), and they also view the usual anti-mutant protesters down below, these days with added complaints against the mutants colonising Mars and hogging immortality for themselves. Scott Summers reminds Jean Grey that The 5 can only practically bring a limited number of people back to life.
On the living island Krakoa, currently home to ~200,000 mutants, Destiny has also been predicting a war but she wasn't sure who with. It's not their enemies Orchis but now she tells her 'family' Mystique and Nightcrawler that the Eternals are going to try to kill all mutants. The 2 women go to gather the Quiet Council that rules Krakoa, while Kurt Wagner takes a Krakoan Gateway to Mars, now renamed Arakko, to alert the Great Ring. There he finds Cable, Magneto and Storm. They decide that Ororo will go to represent Arakko at the Quiet Council while Magneto and Nightcrawler take the message to the Great Ring. Cable will formulate a plan of war. Kurt muses that just as the Olympian Gods had to kill their predecessors the Titans, the mutants are now the new gods who must supplant the old gods the Eternals.
Sersi awakens trapped in a chair in a 'psychic dead room' in Avengers Mountain HQ at the North Pole being interrogated by a remote-controlled Iron Man armour to avoid her mental powers. She matter-manipulates her dress into her usual costume as Tony reminds her how last month (Eternals #10-12) some of her people snuck into the HQ to commune with it (because it's actually the body of a dead Celestial). At that time they reluctantly admitted that Thanos had become their leader and was about to destroy the Earth but they'd deal with it (and they did). Now he wants to know what else they're hiding.
But just then Captain America decides to change the approach by entering the room personally. Sersi used to be an Avenger (#314-375) and he's prepared to trust her. But she claims that she doesn't know *anything* about the Eternals preparing for war. Iron Man says he's been monitoring the world for Eternal activity since their last confrontation and last week (A.X.E.: Eve Of Judgment 1-shot) he detected a large spike of Celestial energy in the Pacific (ie below Krakoa as we saw then). And during the last day there have been lower-level pulses all over the world. She still protests her ignorance and tells them that she and others they know like Ikaris and Thena have left Eternal Society. Druig rules the Eternals now and she doesn't know *what* he's up to.
In Olympia (1 hour earlier) Druig addressed hologram representatives of various Eternal groups. He reminds them of the 3rd Principle that their makers the Celestials built in to the Eternals - to Correct Excess Deviation. For millennia they have policed the Deviants. But recently (Et#12) it came to light that Deviant interbreeding with humans was the cause of superhuman abilities, and in particular the X-gene that produces the mutants. So he reasons that the mutants are Deviants and should have been watched for Excess Deviation. And now that they have discovered how to resurrect themselves and have colonised Mars then they will spread Excess Deviation through all time and space. This *must* be Corrected. This (limited form of the) Uni-Mind gives their approval.
Druig then visits the Exclusion prison under the South Pole to talk to Uranos to tell him that the council have agreed to let him out for the 1st time in millennia to do 1 task. He will only have 1 hour then the Great Machine will teleport him back to his cell. Uranos says that the mutants may have terraformed Mars in 1 day (Planet-Size X-Men 1-shot) but he can undo it all in 1 hour.
Druig then moves to the Damocles Foundation HQ in Los Angeles to confer with Moira MacTaggert. He's surprised that the long-time ally of mutants should now be part of their foes Orchis. She relates how she helped found the Krakoan utopia but she was cast out after Destiny was resurrected against her advice. So now she and Orchis will do whatever they can to help Druig destroy the mutant nation.
On Krakoa Professor X explains that the Eternals have not previously been enemies of mutants and the Krakoans aren't prepared for war against them. Meanwhile Exodus points out that Mister Sinister (who he has a grudge against) is suspiciously absent. But all discussion is disrupted by a psychic attack by half of the Eternals joined into a true Uni-Mind. Mutant psychics strike back as Druig describes to MacTaggert how the other half of his Eternals are making a physical attack wearing their ancient war armour. And the X-Men team teleport from NY to Krakoa to take charge of the defence.
Moira points out that there are about a million mutants on Arakko, mostly Arakkii hardened by centuries of war in another dimension. Druig claims to have that in hand. And as the Great Ring meet on Arakko a great destruction begins on that planet. Instead he turns MacTaggert's attention to the mutant race's method of immortality. The Eternals will be resurrected as long as the Great Machine/Earth endures. But the mutant resurrection system depends on Hope Summers and 4 other mutants.
On Krakoa Wolverine and others are fighting the armoured Eternals when Logan detects that 1 of The 5, Egg, as been killed. He quickly moves to where Hope is and saves her from an invisible attacker. The Eternal Jack Of Knives makes himself visible. Wolverine explains that the Eternal was completely undetectable except for the smell of Egg's blood on his dagger. Jack hurls many daggers to pierce Logan's body and then teleports away. Logan alerts Marvel Girl that the Eternals are after The 5 and so obviously know the secret of mutant resurrection. Jean Grey mentally orders everyone to protect The 5. But Druig calls off the Eternal attack now that its main objective has been lost. In Arbor Magna Egg is resurrected from 1 of the eggs he prepared earlier.
But then Nightcrawler teleports in through what he says was the last working Gate on Arakko to report that they need to resurrect the mutant leaders of Mars. We see The 5 bring Cable back to life. And we see Uranos on a devastated planet as the last seconds of his hour tick down. Then he's back in his cell reporting his success to Druig. He deduces that the other half of Druig's plan didn't work and asks to be released again to deal with the mutants on Earth. He promises to only wipe out 1 hemisphere of the globe. But Druig has other tricks to try 1st.
In Avengers HQ IM gets word of the attack on Krakoa. But then he also says that the energy spikes he detected earlier have now concentrated off the western coast of the US. Then Druig beams a message to all human communication devices to tell the world that the mutants have become too much of a menace so now the Eternals will protect the world from them as they have protected it for millennia. Many humans are delighted by this. But he goes on to ask them not to fear the 'towering death machines' that are rising from the sea. They aren't death machines but Eternals known as the Hex come seeking mutants. However it would be wise for humans to vacate the coastal regions.
Cap assembles the Avengers, including Nighthawk, Starbrand and Sub-Mariner who we haven't previously seen this issue. They're keeping Sersi prisoner because she hasn't yet explained *why* she and some others left Eternal society. (Regular Eternals readers know it's because they discovered that every time 1 of them is resurrected a human has to die - something they *don't* want humans to learn about.) Tony Stark has set up extra alarms to detect Eternal intrusion after the last time, and they now go off.
It's the Celestian Priests Ajak and Makarri with their prisoner Mr Sinister (see AXE:EOJ). Ajak explains that they want to avoid an Eternals/mutants war that would devastate the planet. The Eternals are compelled to Correct Excess Deviation by their Celestial programming. But that programming could be rewritten by a Celestial god, and she wants their help to create a new 1. Tony admires the boldness of their plan but doesn't see how it could be done. She gestures around them and points out that they're living in 1 of the major ingredients - the body and brain of a Celestial.