Richard had no intention of remaining to witness Druig's mental assault on the villagers. In the Eternal's current state—reduced to pure instinct without rational thought—any humans subjected to his telepathic control would suffer the same psychological breakdown, transformed into mindless beasts driven by primal urges alone.
While Richard harbored deep contempt for the Eternals as a species, he wasn't callous enough to allow Druig to torment innocent civilians. The villagers were simply ordinary people seeking refuge from the hardships of modern life. Whatever circumstances had driven them to flee urban centers for Druig's isolated "paradise," they had already endured enough suffering without becoming victims of his revenge.
The moment Druig began unleashing uncontrolled telepathic waves, Richard simultaneously deployed his own mental abilities. Without effort, he seized complete control over Druig's body, freezing the broken Eternal in place before he could inflict lasting psychological damage on the settlement's residents.
If Druig had retained his full consciousness, he might have posed some minimal resistance to Richard's telepathic dominance. In his current diminished state, however, opposing Richard's mental control was utterly impossible.
Rather than attempting to manipulate Druig from a distance, Richard teleported directly to the church where the Eternal stood paralyzed. The moment he materialized, Richard began channeling magical energy into a binding spell.
Eternal Winter.
Ice crystals formed around Druig's motionless form with supernatural speed, encasing him within a massive crystalline prison several meters in height. Within seconds, the once-mighty Eternal was trapped like a prehistoric insect preserved in amber, his body completely immobilized by magical ice that would resist any conventional method of escape.
With Druig properly contained, Richard stored the enormous ice block within his system space. While the dimensional storage normally rejected living beings, Richard had discovered a useful loophole in its programming: completely frozen targets registered as inanimate objects, allowing him to circumvent the restriction entirely.
He'd tested this technique extensively using various small animals, confirming that the freezing process caused no permanent damage. Upon thawing, subjects would resume their previous activities without any apparent side effects from their time in suspended animation.
Having secured his newest asset, Richard immediately teleported away from the Amazon village. The remaining residents would never learn how close they'd come to psychological destruction, nor would they understand that their spiritual leader had been casually abducted by a being of cosmic power.
Even if they had somehow become aware of these events, there was nothing they could have done to prevent them.
After departing the rainforest, Richard decided against immediately searching for Ajak and Phastos—the two Eternals who particularly disgusted him. Instead, he produced the Cosmic Cube and began crafting a spatial gateway to Australia.
Although his search of the South Dakota farm had proven fruitless, Richard's instincts suggested that Thena and Gilgamesh should currently be residing somewhere in the Australian continent. Whether they had established themselves in the specific location he remembered from the movies remained uncertain, but Australia represented his best lead for locating the pair.
Richard's decision to prioritize Thena and Gilgamesh wasn't arbitrary. Thena had been suffering from Mahd Wy'ry—the "Eternal Dementia"—for centuries, making her an ideal target for the psychological warfare he intended to wage.
His overall strategy was elegantly simple: Sersi, Sprite, and Kingo would eliminate each other under the influence of their mental puppet viruses, while the mindless Druig would serve as the perfect weapon against Thena and Gilgamesh.
In terms of raw physical combat capability, the broken Druig posed no meaningful threat to either warrior. However, his uncontrolled telepathic abilities created opportunities for devastating psychological attacks. Most importantly, Druig's chaotic mental influence would likely trigger a complete psychotic break in Thena, whose fragile psychological state had already been compromised by millennia of accumulated trauma.
If Richard's calculations proved correct, the encounter would quickly devolve into a two-against-one scenario: Druig and the mad Thena working in inadvertent concert to destroy Gilgamesh.
While orchestrating the mutual destruction of what amounted to a romantic couple might seem needlessly cruel, Richard felt no compunction about his methods. The Eternals had earned his enmity through their fundamental nature and their role in cosmic events beyond this reality.
His plans for the remaining four Eternals followed similar patterns of psychological manipulation. Phastos and Makkari would be arranged to kill each other through carefully crafted circumstances, while Ikaris and Ajak required a more direct approach. Richard intended to manipulate Ikaris into murdering Ajak first, then personally eliminate Ikaris himself—a fitting end for the Eternal he considered most dangerous.
The spatial gateway to Australia stabilized within moments, its crystalline edges shimmering with barely contained cosmic energy. Without hesitation, Richard stepped through the portal, instantly traveling from the humid Amazon rainforest to the arid expanses of the Australian outback.
Upon arrival, he immediately deployed his telepathic abilities to scan for the distinctive mental signatures of his targets. Despite Australia's massive territory—the sixth-largest country on Earth—the search required minimal effort for several practical reasons.
First, Thena and Gilgamesh would never choose to live in populated urban areas. Their preference for isolation meant they would establish residence in the continent's vast uninhabited regions, significantly narrowing the search parameters.
Second, the Eternals' alien consciousness patterns remained easily distinguishable from baseline human thought processes, allowing Richard to filter out irrelevant mental noise.
Finally, his enhanced telepathic range could now encompass entire continents without strain, making comprehensive sweeps both rapid and thorough.
As expected, Thena and Gilgamesh had established themselves in precisely the location Richard remembered from the films. After locking onto their mental signatures, he teleported to a position just outside their makeshift homestead.
The dwelling was exactly as he'd envisioned: a sturdy stone house constructed by Gilgamesh's own hands, situated in the middle of nowhere with no other human habitation for hundreds of miles in any direction.
Through his enhanced vision, Richard observed Gilgamesh inside the house, wearing a domestic apron as he prepared their midday meal. The sight of the ancient warrior engaged in such mundane domestic activities would have been amusing under different circumstances.
Thena was positioned several hundred meters away from the house, seated beneath a gnarled dead tree as she worked on what appeared to be a detailed drawing. Her artistic pursuits served as both creative outlet and meditation technique, helping her maintain psychological stability during her lucid periods.
Neither Eternal detected Richard's presence as he hovered invisibly above their sanctuary.
Rather than announcing himself, Richard retrieved the frozen Druig from his system space. The massive ice block materialized in the air above the settlement, its crystalline surface reflecting the harsh Australian sunlight.
Channeling magical energy through his hands, Richard began rapidly dissolving the mystical ice that held Druig prisoner. The crystalline structure evaporated like morning mist, releasing its captive after only two or three seconds of focused effort.
Before the ice block completely dissipated, Richard teleported back to his aerial vantage point several miles above the confrontation zone. From this position, he could observe the developing situation without risking detection.
As consciousness returned to his damaged mind, Druig's first response was confused disorientation as he attempted to process his dramatically changed surroundings. The transition from Amazon rainforest to Australian outback would have been jarring even for a mentally intact individual.
His second response was a guttural roar of rage and confusion—the sound of an apex predator suddenly thrust into unfamiliar territory.
The inhuman cry immediately captured Gilgamesh's attention within the stone house. After several seconds, the warrior emerged from his domestic activities, still wearing his cooking apron as he studied the unexpected visitor with obvious concern.
"Druig? What are you doing here?" Gilgamesh called out, his voice carrying both confusion and growing alarm. "You look... unwell, my friend."
Rather than responding with words, Druig launched himself forward with the single-minded aggression of a rabid animal, his movements lacking any trace of the calculated intelligence that had once made him formidable.
Though uncertain about the cause of Druig's apparent madness, Gilgamesh immediately activated his cosmic energy reserves. Golden light coalesced around his right hand, forming the intricate gauntlet that served as both weapon and focus for his tremendous physical strength.
The moment his power manifested, Gilgamesh struck out with a measured blow aimed at Druig's center mass—enough force to incapacitate without causing permanent damage.
CRACK.
The impact sent Druig flying several meters backward, his body hitting the hard-packed earth with bone-jarring force. However, Gilgamesh had deliberately held back, using only a fraction of his available strength while he attempted to determine whether his old companion had somehow contracted the same psychological affliction that plagued Thena.
Apart from Mahd Wy'ry, Gilgamesh couldn't conceive of any other explanation for Druig's bestial behavior.