MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos

by Barry Lyga

  Suddenly the battle on the Blood Edda all those years ago made much more sense.

  “In any event,” Thanos said, clearing his throat, “I have ample reason to believe that Odin is in possession of this Aether.”

  The Lorespeaker’s grin widened into a satisfied, delighted smile. “There is a story I could tell you…. Actually, more than one. One is about Odin and the Dark Elf Malekith. One is about the planet Earth. Another is about the planet Morag and the fate of that world.”

  “I’m not interested in stories, just information.”

  The Lorespeaker clucked his tongue and wagged a finger. “Tut-tut, Thanos! I’ve told you how my mind works. If I could simply produce information, I would. But I must tell you a story.”

  Folding his arms over his chest, Thanos leaned back in his chair. “Very well, then. Regale me.”

  The Lorespeaker’s lips quirked into something like a grimace. Something about it set off all Thanos’s internal alarms. He tensed; his fingers curled into his palms. But it was just a moment, a tic, perhaps. A misfiring neuron. As quickly as the expression appeared, it faded into the Lorespeaker’s more serious and relaxed mien.

  “Oh no. It’s not that simple. You have to give me something first, Thanos. That is the price for my knowledge.”

  Thanos unclenched his fists and ran his hands down his flanks, proving the flatness of his garb. “I have nothing to give you. I came empty-handed.”

  The Lorespeaker shook his head. “Not something physical. I have no need for gifts. I want your story. I want a memory. Something true and deep. Don’t try telling me what you ate for breakfast this morning. Although… honestly, I’d like to know. I can’t help it. When you have a memory like mine, you thirst for knowledge.”

  “I ate an omelet of bloodeagle eggs with toast and blinkenberry jam,” Thanos told him. “We have a well-stocked larder aboard my vessel, with food stores from a multitude of vanquished worlds at our disposal. I’d be happy to offer you—”

  He broke off. The Lorespeaker wasn’t listening. Instead, the man sat almost perfectly still, licking his lips, eyes closed. His eyes vibrated behind those lids, and Thanos imagined the biochemical processes at work, etching his prosaic breakfast into the permanent memory structures of the Lorespeaker’s unfathomably complicated brain.

  “Good. Great!” said the Lorespeaker, opening his eyes and smiling brightly. “Now, you need to give me some important memory of yours. Something significant. Make it a good one, Thanos, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know about that thing old Bor took from the Dark Elves. Which, I can tell you, isn’t even actually on Asgard anymore.” He grinned slyly. “Interested?”

  Thanos was desperately interested, but he had no idea what sort of memory might satisfy the Lorespeaker’s curiosity. He clenched his fists and thumped his knees lightly. To come so close! All his answers resided in the skull just a few decis away from him, and if there were a way to rip them right out, he would.

  “There’s no rush,” his host told him. “Not for me, at least. Take your time. Think about it.”

  Thanos gave brief consideration to kidnapping the Lorespeaker up to Sanctuary, where Nebula and Gamora could perform the dull necessities of torture that would pry the requisite information out of the man’s living brain. But, he reasoned, a brain as powerful, as complex, and as unutterably alien as the Lorespeaker’s could potentially be resistant to the usual torments and inducements. It was a risk he couldn’t take.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  WITHIN THE CONFINES OF HIS MIND, THANOS REVISITED HIS life, replaying the great battles, the wars. The decisions he’d made that had turned the tide of bloodshed to or against him. The triumphs, both close and foregone. None of them, he decided, would prove to be of exceptional interest to a being who had memorized the greatest wars and conflicts in the history of the known universe.

  Was it possible he’d actually achieved nothing of note? That in pursuit of greatness, he’d stumbled into mediocrity? Was Thanos not a savior but rather just another warlord, traipsing around the galaxy, taking what he wanted, with no higher purpose?

  The Lorespeaker gestured broadly with his scepter. “Have I stumped you, Thanos?”

  Thanos grumbled noncommittally. The Lorespeaker asked him if he would like some food while he thought.

  Thanos considered this. “Where do you get fresh food? There’s no life in the KelDim Sorrow.”

  “I have a hydroponic garden under this building,” the Lorespeaker explained. “I can show it to you, if you like….”

  Thanos had more questions, he realized. They would help him stall as he contemplated the Lorespeaker’s demand for a story.

  “How do you stay here,” Thanos asked, “alone, isolated in this one building, and not go insane?”

  “Oh, but I do go insane!” The Lorespeaker’s tone was bright, unaffected, honest. “It happens every few years; I just lose my mind for a little while.”

  “And then…”

  He offered Thanos a wide, radiant smile. “And then I find it again.”

  “How do you entertain yourself? How do you learn new things?”

  The Lorespeaker tapped his temple. “You forget; I don’t forget. I remember everything I have ever seen or heard or learned. I have a near-infinite array of information to pore over, to study. I am always looking for new connections and patterns. If I need entertainment, I need only recall any one of the nearly infinite stories I’ve been told.” He gazed at Thanos, licking his lips. “Speaking of stories… Have you come up with one yet? I’m not trying to rush you, certainly not on my behalf. I’d be happy to have you stay as long as you like. But I sense you have a particular urgency.”

  “Yes. I have a task that must be completed in the next one hundred billion years.”

  The Lorespeaker did not chuckle or even smile at Thanos’s attempt at humor. He merely nodded very seriously. “Well then, we should get started.”

  He could stall no longer.

  “I don’t know what story to tell you,” Thanos admitted. “My life seems suddenly exceptional and banal all at once. I’ve been an outcast my entire life. By birth and social fiat at first, by my own choices and actions later. I have subscribed to the highest possible standards, believed only in the noblest causes, sacrificed everything, all to arrive here. And now it seems pointless. My task is so enormous that I cannot encompass it, even in my own great intellect. It falls to me to save the universe from itself, and yet the universe seems to conspire against me.”

  When he was done, he half expected the Lorespeaker to laugh at him, to order him out of the domicile. Instead, the other simply gazed at him, hands clasped. “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “You believe you are charged to save the universe. That’s a big job. Who gave it to you?”

  “I gave it to myself. I saw what others could not. Did not. Would not.”

  “There’s more. Something you’re not telling me.”

  With a sigh, Thanos recounted his recurring dream.

  “You cannot save everyone,” the Lorespeaker murmured.

  “But I can save some.”

  “Do you believe this dream is something more than merely a dream?”

  Thanos barked laughter that filled the Lorespeaker’s home. “No. Don’t be absurd. This is simply my own mind reflected back at me, telling me what I need to know in direct language.”

  “You began your life with the cards stacked against you,” said the Lorespeaker. “You were a monstrosity, a deviant, in a world that appreciated conformity and order. You learned an important lesson: Those who stand out, who excel, are beaten down by those who can neither stand out nor excel, using whatever excuses they can.”

  “They were not all like that,” Thanos said, thinking of Gwinth and what she’d said to him: We’re not our parents. We don’t hate and fear just because something is different.

  And then he realized it: The memory he needed to give to the Lorespeaker. It was his and his alone, and it
had nothing to do with war or death or blood. It was, he knew now, the moment that defined him, a moment of light and love.

  “I kissed a woman,” he said slowly. “A special woman.”

  The Lorespeaker perked up. “The Warlord has a heart after all. Go on.”

  It had been a long time ago. Several lifetimes, for all intents and purposes. At first, Thanos wasn’t even sure he could remember the kiss with any sort of fidelity. He experienced a moment of horror when he realized he could not remember her face. It had been supplanted in his memory by the dream-Gwinth, the decaying revenant who’d haunted him since his exile.

  But it was just a moment. It passed and he discovered that as soon as he leaned hard on one tile of memory, other tiles surfaced around it. He remembered the walk through the cluttered, clotted streets of the Eternal City, surrounded by those who were now dead. Sintaa, also dead, tugging him, obstinate and reluctant, into the silencurium.

  And the girl. The girl with the close-cropped hair, bright red. Her pale-yellow skin, sprayed with a freckling of light green. And her first, shy smile as she moved so he could sit with her.

  He would never forget her face again. He would not allow himself to.

  The drink he had drunk that night: green, bubbly, and too sweet, tasting of melon and elderberries and ethyl alcohol. He could taste it again on his tongue, even now, as though he’d just tippled it.

  All of this, leading up to the kiss. The first kiss, when he’d come to understand his yearning for connection, his need to understand himself so he could hope to bond with others. That kiss, the first time he felt humane tenderness, a blending of people.

  “I felt incomplete,” he said to the Lorespeaker, “but with that kiss, I knew that if I pressed forward, if I became the person I needed to become, that I would capture the feeling I needed all along. That the kiss would then mean something. I knew it. I’ve been seeking it. If I can save the universe, then I will become the Thanos who was worthy of that kiss.”

  He still wore his battle armor, but he’d never felt so vulnerable in his life. Not even when bleeding and dying on the end of Yrsa’s war-ax.

  There was more to tell, if need be. How he had then found the courage to go at last to his mother. The shame and disappointment of that meeting. He had it all in him and he could tell it all, no matter how much more vulnerable it would make him. It was worth it, if it led him to the power to save the universe.

  The Lorespeaker smiled a genuine smile of childlike glee. “What a lovely little anecdote, Thanos. Thank you for that.”

  “Is it enough?” Thanos asked gruffly. He felt his limbs about him, his muscles twitching. He was not a lovesick, lovelorn, lovetorn, broken boy. He was a warlord. A conqueror. He had dredged up the memory and given it freely, but he would not let himself wallow in it. There were more important tasks ahead of him; the past could stay behind.

  With a slow nod, the Lorespeaker said, “It will suffice.”

  “Then tell me of the artifact.”

  “It’s not that simple….”

  Thanos stood abruptly, pulling himself up to his full, intimidating height. He cracked his knuckles and hovered over the smaller man. “I am not one for games, Lorespeaker. Don’t misinterpret my fond memory of a bygone age as weakness. I have murdered worlds. One more gallon of blood on my hands will not disturb me in the slightest.”

  The Lorespeaker chuckled, absolutely unworried, and stood up, tapping his scepter against Thanos’s chest. “Thanos, Thanos, Thanos! We’re friends! No need for threats. I’m going to tell you everything you need to know. I just need to do it as a story, you see? It’s right there in my name: Lorespeaker.” He twirled his index finger around his ear. “That’s how my brain works, remember? It’s not a loose collection of facts and figures up here; it’s an interconnected skein of characters and notions and plots.”

  “Just be quick about it,” Thanos said.

  “I will edit on the fly as judiciously as I can,” the Lorespeaker promised. “We will call this story… oh, let’s see… The Parable of Morag! Are you ready?”

  With a grumpy twist of his lips, Thanos flopped back onto the sofa, which groaned loudly in complaint. “I suppose I have no choice.”

  “Great!” The Lorespeaker clapped his hands together and wrung them joyfully. “Let’s begin!”

  CHAPTER XL

  The Parable of Morag

  THE WORLD OF MORAG CIRCLED—STILL CIRCLES, actually—the binary eclipsing M31V in the western spiral arm of the Andromeda Galaxy. There are a trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, and so trillions more worlds, yet this one has particular meaning for us and for our story.

  Morag today is not dead in the sense that the Sorrow is dead. Life still thrives there, in the form of vegetation, rodents, and a particularly dangerous species of amphibious predators. But intelligent life was wiped out millennia ago, owing in part to Morag’s own hubris.

  For though Morag was a world of many technological wonders, the people of that flourishing civilization ignored the evidence of their science in favor of the evidence of their eyes. Told by data that their world was imperiled, they instead clung to the evidence before them, which told them that the weather was perhaps a bit colder this winter or hotter this summer, but surely nothing to worry about.

  They learned soon enough how wrong they were. The drastic temperature fluctuations brought about by global climate change melted the polar ice caps, and the planet was entirely flooded. No one survived.

  Except, as mentioned before, the Orloni rodents and the weird crocodile-like things that thrived in the water, and so on.

  But before they died, the people of Morag built a great temple to hide and preserve their most powerful artifact: an Infinity Stone.

  Yes, an Infinity Stone! The people of Morag had been entrusted—or perhaps cursed—with the possession of this, one of the most potent and powerful artifacts in the entirety of the known universe!

  “If it’s so powerful, why didn’t they use it to save their world?”

  “Hush! I’m getting there!”

  The Stone was powerful, true… but that was all it was. Powerful. It was, in fact, the Power Stone itself. Legend tells that it was a purple bauble, which could enhance the bearer’s physical abilities, imbuing him or her or they or it or eir or pers or vis or xyr with incredible power. The ability to manipulate energy! The strength to lift buildings! Power enough, when properly channeled, to obliterate entire worlds!

  But not, sadly enough, power to save. Power to protect. The Power Stone could only be used for violence and destruction. In the face of encroaching global catastrophe, it was useless.

  Yet the people of Morag knew that the Power Stone must be protected and preserved. They restrained its great power in an Orb, then built around the Orb an entire temple devoted to the housing and protection of the Stone.

  Like the rest of the planet’s civilization, the temple was consumed by the hungry, overfed waters of Morag. Yet, it is whispered that every three hundred years, the waters recede enough to make the temple accessible. And that perhaps someone very brave…

  Or very foolish…

  Or very both…

  Might be able to enter the temple and possess, at last, the lost legacy of the people of Morag: the Infinity Stone of Power!

  CHAPTER XLI

  “I’VE NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING,” THANOS SAID. “AND I don’t see how it could be of use to me. I already possess the power to lay waste to worlds.”

  “Ah, but you must consider where the Stone comes from, Thanos!”

  “And that is…?”

  “Your wit is sharp, your mind strong, yet your education is lacking. Have you heard of the Celestials?”

  “No.”

  The light of realization flashed in the Lorespeaker’s eyes. He licked his lips and thrust a triumphant finger in the air and…

  CHAPTER XLII

  The Parable of the Universal Powers

  IN THE WAKE OF THE UNIVERSE’S CREATION, THERE A
ROSE the Celestials! Beings enormous in power, in stature, and in influence. They are to us as gods to ants, more powerful than even the mighty Asgardians. Some say they were born in the heat of the Big Bang. Others that they came into being billions of years later, predating the rise of intelligence and civilization throughout the universe.

  However they were born, they were the first of the great species to roam the stars. And they had the potential to wield the Infinity Stones.

  The Stones were the remnants of a universe that preceded our own: six singularities that survived the Big Bang and were forged by unimaginable beings into concentrated ingots. Each one had a characteristic tied to a specific aspect of the universe as a whole: Time, Space, Reality, Mind, Soul, and of course Power.

  As time passed and the young universe aged, the ingots came into the hands of beings of great powers, such as the Celestials and their kin. They were modified and tinkered with, until they were six great Stones, each one capable of imbuing its wielder with almost limitless power within its specific domain.

  So powerful were the Stones that no one could control them entirely. And as time wore on, the Stones were lost, one by one, eventually passing into the realm of legend, then myth… and then outright forgotten. Today, few know what an Infinity Stone is, and even those who do don’t necessarily believe they exist.

  But they do, Thanos.

  They do.

  CHAPTER XLIII

  DURING THE SECOND PARABLE—WHICH SEEMED TO BE more about the Stones than about the Celestials, but he said nothing on this score—Thanos had leaned forward, elbows on knees, his fingers steepled before his frowning visage. His brow furrowed with concentration.

  It was, of course, ridiculous. Absurd. He dismissed the very idea of such things. They had no place in the rational universe as he understood it. They were a…