After leaving Counter-Earth, the Planeswalker kept drifting through space.
Rocket took his friends to say goodbye to Skyl. Lylla, Floor, Teefs, and Groot were all remarkably capable in their own right, and none of them seemed interested in settling down on some quiet planet to live a peaceful life. They looked more like they planned to keep roaming the star-seas and making their living the old-fashioned illegal way. The galaxy was probably about to get a lot more lively.
Tony suddenly realized they had not heard anything about Star-Lord in quite a while. The guy had been hauled off to the Kyln, and nobody knew how he was doing.
"Hey, does anybody remember that Missouri kid? He's been in prison for so long, you don't think something happened to him, do you?"
Skyl blinked in realization. "That's right, I knew we'd forgotten somebody." Because of the changes to the timeline, Skyl had lived through an extremely long stretch of years. Afterward, he had extracted that memory with Legilimency and kept it as a private souvenir. But with so much time in between, he had ended up forgetting all about poor Quill.
Moonshadow's tone stayed calm. "If that child can't break out on his own, I'll be very disappointed."
Skyl said, "Gamora was locked up with Quill too, Thanos's daughter. I happen to have a few questions for her."
Tony raised a brow. "So you're finally going to keep that appointment on Xandar? I thought getting the Soul Stone was supposed to be a huge pain."
"It is," Skyl said. "But there's always a way."
When the Planeswalker arrived at the Kyln, they found the space prison under repair. A hole the size of a football field had been blasted through the outer hull, and the cold corpses of prisoners drifted through open space. The wardens were too busy to even collect the bodies.
It looked like a truly spectacular jailbreak had taken place.
"Mr. Quill didn't get hurt, did he?" Jojani asked anxiously.
Jormungand slipped out of the ship, took a little tour outside, then came back looking disappointed. "Mom, the tasty Star-Lord isn't here." Ever since she had bitten Quill once, she had never stopped thinking about the flavor of Celestial flesh. It had a fragrance unlike ordinary matter or energy, rich and clean, not sharp on the tongue the way a star was, and packed with life-force. The last thing she had eaten with that kind of satisfaction had been her grandfather, Lord Galactus.
Gali was curious about what a Celestial tasted like too, but now that she was a mother, she had to act with dignity, so she did an excellent job of not showing her disappointment.
Tony said, "I saw that pout. You wanted to eat the kid too, didn't you?"
"No, I didn't!" Gali snapped, embarrassed and annoyed, and punched Tony hard enough that his magic armor very nearly came apart on the spot.
Skyl rubbed his chin and estimated just how much energy it would take to blow a hole that large through the prison's armored shell. Even master-level Destruction magic would have a hard time replicating that effect. A lightning storm would need at least half a minute to melt thousands of tons of metal plating. Judging from the traces left behind, this wound had been punched through in an instant. The extreme heat had vaporized the alloy on contact, and when the metal vapor cooled, it crystallized across the outside wall of the prison in huge natural growths like sharp-edged branches.
Skyl searched a guard's memory and found the culprit. Two days earlier, a man standing on top of a spacecraft had attacked the prison, blown straight through it, and carried off several inmates in the confusion.
"So, someone powerful rescued our dear Mr. Star-Lord. Let me guess, that was probably his biological father, Ego the Celestial."
"His father? I thought he was also, well... never mind." Tony's attention was fixed on Quill's dad. "At least the guy came to rescue his son. Sounds pretty loyal, all things considered."
"A Celestial? The tasty kind of Celestial?" Gali and Jormungand were clearly focused on something very different from everybody else.
Skyl's voice turned cold. "Ego may be Star-Lord's biological father, but he's a first-rate bastard. A textbook case of treating his children as disposable tools. He even murdered Quill's mother with his own hands. You do not often see someone take 'use them and throw them away' quite that far. His plan is to combine his own power with the Celestial power inside Quill, activate the avatars he planted on countless living worlds, devour all life, and merge with the universe itself in pursuit of a kind of false eternity."
Tony shrugged. "Compared to that, my dad deserves Father of the Year."
"If this Celestial is a bad guy, can we eat him?" The two space ribbon-worms swayed eagerly in place.
"Uh..." Skyl gave it some thought. Ego's true body was basically a brain, so if they were going to eat him... maybe deep-fried brain bites?
That sounded weirdly appetizing... no, horribly cruel.
"Skyl, just say yes," Gali pleaded, doing her best impression of pitiful innocence. "You never let us eat anything fun. Who's supposed to make up for all the nutrients we're missing?"
"We'll play it by ear," Skyl said at last. He still did not actually agree, only said they would go meet Ego first.
He had his own issues with Ego. Some instinct peculiar to wizards told Skyl that if Ego succeeded in devouring all life, it would interfere with Skyl's own path toward becoming a cosmic soul. Publicly, that made this a matter of saving all living beings. Privately, it was a clash of paths. One way or another, he had to make this trip.
Ego's location was just as secret as the others, known to very few. But Yondu Udonta of the Ravagers would definitely know it. Back then, he had been the one who accepted Ego's job and went to Earth to abduct the young Peter Quill.
Yondu Udonta was constantly on the move too, but he always had a few starports where he laid low. Space-age pirates, the Ravagers were a very pure breed. They believed wealth had to come from theft, robbery, and other illegal work, handouts did not count. That was part of the code, and so was not trafficking children.
Rules created honor, and honor could bind a loose rabble together.
Even creatures like the Ravagers, cosmic cockroaches and parasites on civilization, had their own set of beliefs, and they often took them more seriously than polished gentlemen in tailored suits ever did.
Unfortunately, Yondu Udonta had broken the Ravager code. Years ago, he kidnapped Quill. It was the worst deal he had ever made, and somehow also the best.
The bad part was obvious. Other Ravager clans treated him like a disgrace because of it. On top of that, he had to raise that little Earth brat, which cost him time, money, and no small amount of effort. Not only did he never get paid by the client, he actually lost money on the whole business. Who could he even complain to about that?
As for why the deal had been worth it, Yondu himself probably could not say. No decent parent can really explain what practical benefit there is in raising a child. Children always turn life upside down. They drain your wallet dry and leave you exhausted every day. No sane person would deliberately go looking for baggage like that. But maybe people are fools. Or maybe that is simply what life is.
The Planeswalker landed on Contraxia. On that barren, freezing backwater world of endless snow, the Ravagers had built themselves a little paradise fit for interstellar pirates.
The moment Skyl and the others stepped off the ship, more than a hundred guns were leveled at their heads.
Yondu Udonta bared a mouthful of rotten teeth as he slowly tied his belt back on. A moment ago he had still been sweating on top of a robot prostitute, but the post-coital lull had not improved his mood. If anything, it had only dropped him into a deeper, more unbearable emptiness.
"Earth boy, tell me why you're here. Don't lie, or you'll regret it."
The Planeswalkers paid the gun barrels no attention at all. The only one who might have been scared, Jojani, had sensibly stayed inside the ship. Moonshadow's beauty, on the other hand, had the whole pack of lowlifes practically drooling.
"Boss," one of the Ravager lieutenants muttered in Yondu's ear, "how about we grab the pretty one first?"
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810