Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This whole issue takes place well before Empyre, sometime after Avengers: Celestial Quest.
Back in Giant-Size Av #4 the Prime Cotati occupied the form of the dead Swordsman (Jacques DuQuesne) in order to marry Mantis and conceive Quoi, the Celestial Messiah. In Lords Of Empyre: Celestial Messiah we learned that becoming Swordsman corrupted him with humanness and so he was denied access to the Cotati plant psychic Conclave on their planet Tamal, although we see here that they accept the prophesied plant/human hybrid Messiah. And cut of from his kind, his human and plant sides have become fused and he has become increasingly bitter.
Now he has a mission for himself and his son, which the Conclave also disapprove of, but Quoi will follow his father. In West Coast Av #39 the Cotati Swordsman gave the Avenger DuQuesne's sword to Hawkeye. Now he wants to retrieve it and return it to Jacque's grave where it belongs. He changes them both to look more human as a disguise because they're not going to ask for the sword, they're going to steal it.
Hawkeye kept the sword in a display case in Avengers HQ, which now is in Stark Tower. We see Captain America and Iron Man who have discovered it gone, the case broken open by vines. (At this time they obviously don't suspect the Cotati. They presumably think the culprit is someone like Plantman.)
The next scene is the Temple of the Priests Of Pama in Vietnam (where Mantis was raised, DuQuesne was buried and the Prime Cotati lived before he and Mantis were married). Suddenly rapid plant growth starts to wreck the place. Leonora Yoon, Alchemax Asia Pacific VP in Seoul, contacts Robert Chandler, Alchemax Genetics Director in New York, to tell him about it and that she's sent a team in. The company already had its eye on the trees there as a biomedical source.
Meanwhile Swordsman and Quoi have landed some way away from the Temple so as not to draw attention to it, and the Cotati grove it hides. Quoi thinks he's worrying unnecessarily because humans are their allies (as in Av: Celestial Quest). But the human memories and feelings within Swordsman tell him they aren't to be trusted. And when they reach the Temple they find that the grove has bloomed 'in celebration of Quoi's arrival', and that Alchemax troops have got there before them.
Naive Quoi walks in to reason with the soldiers, who tell him they're here to cut down the trees. When he protests they restrain him and his father. But Swordsman fights back, and Quoi joins in to prevent gunfire. However he is bitten by a guard dog and hit by a bullet, which enrages 'Jacques'. When Quoi quickly recovers and his father threatens to turn plants against them the soldiers assume they are mutants. But Quoi takes Swordsman's sword and uses it to cut through a vine. He energises it with his powers and hands it to a scientist, saying it will yield fabulous medicines. Strangely the opposition agree to leave.
The duo enter the Temple which Jacques declares to be 3rd Empire Kree, millennia old, yet they find a frescos depicting Mantis, Swordsman and the birth of the Celestial Messiah. SM leads the way to a huge tree which he says was his original form. His son realises that they aren't here just to return the sword. Daddy confirms that this grove has given him permission to rejoin them and he wants to do it because it will get rid of the human in him. Unhappy Quoi won't stay and watch.
But Swordsman follows him outside and they share a sunrise. He offers his son the sword as a keepsake. Quoi takes it and *does* stay to watch through days and nights as his father's body is slowly absorbed into the tree trunk. When it's finished he leaves the sword there and goes away.
Robert Chandler has analysed the vine specimen and deduced that it is sentient. He tells Leonora Yoon that when it is full-grown they should be able to map its neural architecture and develop cures for degenerative neurological conditions. But that would take 30 years so he wants the existing trees cut down and shipped over.
The Alchemax gang return and start work. The Prime Cotati reforms as Swordsman (but with various bits still missing) and exits from his tree to see the rest of the grove butchered. He finds his sword and angrily attacks the workers. The soldiers respond but he slaughters them all as Quoi watches. He likens humans to Galactus, the Devourer Of Worlds, and suggests that his why they fear *him* above all others - because they recognise themselves in him. Now because of them he has lost the peace he finally found in the Conclave. He breaks the sword in 2 and the duo leave Earth.
Back on Tamal Quoi says he's at last seen what humans are capable of. They destroyed the Cotati grove that was older than their entire civilisation. The Celestial Messiah was meant to be the saviour of both plants and animals, but now he will dedicate himself only to plant-life. His 1st action is to grow a new golden sword for his father out of his own being (which Swordsman has been brandishing throughout the main series). Then he forces the grove to accept his father. And they start the journey to Empyre.