Shadow King - The Astral Jaunt.
Feb. 6th, 2008 03:02 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAfter being alerted by Wanda, the psies organize a hasty rescue, venturing inside Cain Marko's mind.
Westchester NY, USA. February 6th, 1am-5am.
Shadow King screamed silently inside itself, enraged at its own stupidity. No one who had been made on the Astral Plane could remain ignorant of the careful balance that maintained its foundation, that allowed that very dimension to exist.
His miscalculation had not gone unnoticed by the Plane. And now, it -never calm and stable in the best of time - was raging, the ripples of his fight with Juggernaut growing and gathering force into a gale of pure entropy, raining destruction and chaos in its wake, feeding on itself and growing yet more. The Plane roiled with baleful energy.
The entity had never seen the like.
It was horrifying, it was awesome in its fury and it was beautiful.
But most of all it was completely unpredictable. A result of such a small misstep - and now...
And now, the entity itself was trapped, as much as Cain himself. Too much energy was expended in its initial assault on Marko's mind. Too much of that precious reserve. Too much of it processed through the failing body of Farouk. Disengaging now and trying for another host? Impossible! No time.
Not enough. Never enough. The web it was wrapping around Cain never quite stayed. Always a sliver of understanding that it was all only an illusion remained somewhere deep in Marko's backbrain, allowing him to tear himself free, feeding his rage yet more.
And yet the Shadow King had that power. It was waiting, begging to be used, hovering tantalizingly just at his finger tips, calling to the entity in a siren's voice. Its tendrils buried deep and sure, trembling with need inside dozens of telepaths around the world, waiting to send him power enough to swamp this thug's mind.
So near and so useless!
Farouk's body would never cope with the sudden influx of so much extra energy. Already the Shadow King had been forced to limit itself to minute amounts for months, blocking even Farouk's own powers, and even that had not been enough to stop his physical frame from failing.
And now he was trapped here, shackled to the mind so unexpectedly well protected by the seemingly endless reserves of fury, the rage swirling like a tornado of fire.
His greatest strength and his Achilles heel. For rage consumed as well as protected. Burning out the very self that Marko was trying to protect.
And when the last embers cooled, only an emptiness would remain. A barren wasteland prime for molding.
Shadow King shuddered under yet more blows but laughed.
A roll of the dice, all or nothing.
Who would be left standing in the end - would it be Marko, the entity crushed and stomped into the ground. or the Shadow King inheriting the charred remnants of his mind?
It laughed again, mockingly, into Cain's face. The two giants were still locked together, neither giving an inch, trading blow for blow with no retreat imaginable for either.
And around them the Astral Plane was burning.
---
#Hold to the link,# Charles sent to the others, his voice mental voice calm and steady despite the chaos into which they were descending. #No matter what you see.#
Steadying himself in the mindscape, mask firmly affixed, Jim looked around. They stood in a jungle, lush and exotic with flora he'd never seen before -- and burning. Amidst blackening leaves and trees dripping fire the telepaths stood untouched, and in the distance there was the shudder of an explosion. Fire bloomed over the trees.
From what he knew of Cain's military career, Jim could hazard a guess as to how it had come about. Still, something felt . . . off. The sky seemed too close, heavy, like a thunderstorm about to break, and he didn't think it was a consequence of Cain's subconscious.
And there was something else, almost on the edge of hearing. Jim frowned and looked back at his companions. #Um . . . I know this isn't relevant right now, but is anyone else hearing The Doors?#
"Haha," Betsy laughed rather darkly at a burning bush. "Even at a time like this Cain's sense of humor never ceases to fail." She looked over the assembled group. #What? It's not like I'm questioning his taste in music because seriously, 'This is the End'? If I ever decide to decorate my mind with the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now, you are all more than welcome to put me out of my misery.#
#I love your priorities,# Jim murmured, squinting to see if anything was at the center of the distant conflagration.
#The dangerous thing with a thought like that,# Jean put in idly, turning around in a slow circle to get the full effect of the devastation, #is that with our luck, someone will try to take over your brain and provide the sound effect. Although I promise to follow through on the putting you out of your misery bit, if they do.#
Nathan was sticking close to her, a physical manifestation of the fact that he still felt most comfortable linked to her, of any of the assembled telepaths. #Metaphorical crap,# he sent edgily, his astral form flickering back and forth, street clothes to jungle-pattern fatigues. #Why is it always the metaphorical crap?#
#A defensive reaction, Nathan,# Charles sent soothingly, although the bulk of his attention was clearly on their surroundings. #It can actually tell us a great deal about what's going on.#
Deep inside of Cain's psyche the entity felt their approach and were it able to stretch its non-existent lips in a smile it would have done so.
Finally.
Predictable like clockwork - not that the X-Men had any viable options, in the situation he had presented them with.
At least one part of this monumental fuck-up had gone right.
With a superhuman effort the Shadow King refrained from tugging on the hooks buried deep within the psis that were slowly making their way through the outskirts of Juggernaut's mind. It was not yet the time.
If they were alerted now...
No.
The temptation of those tendrils, each pushing with the power, so much power that it could roll Cain's mind in mere minutes, had to be ignored for now.
The blows of the enraged Marko rocked the entity again and again, but it was long past the first bewildered shock and refused to once again be bullied into losing its focus and concentration.
Wishing, incongruously, that it could pray, the Shadow King began its gambit as it grudgingly gave way under Marko's onslaught.
For sheer power, here in his own mind the former host of Cyttorak was nearly equal of the Shadow King.
But then, psionics were never a game of simple power.
The entity twisted and wove, distracting Marko's attention with an array of images and scenarios, a never-ending carousel of horrors and pain and frustrated hopes, of memories and dreams and nightmares battering at his mind.
Meanwhile a barest amount of its power bled off unnoticed.
Strength. Power. A place for all of them, but in the end the mind was always the battlefield of skill.
A faint change and the jungle thickened slightly, a subtle change that twisted the path running through it, a mere hint of wind to send the fire raging toward the other ways and soon the psis found themselves following a back trail he had so carefully constructed for them.
Worry suffused the entity. All of its preparation, all of its work -so much could go wrong.
It all hinged on Xavier. He was the most experienced of them, he if anyone could sense a trap.
And yet that very experience would betray him.
Reeling and desperately defending itself from the attacks of the seemingly berserk Cain, the Shadow King cast its net a little thinner yet, leading the psis in ever narrowing spiral toward the tether that anchored Cain's mind to the Astral Plane.
Buying the time it needed to complete the trap.
And soon enough the edges of the jungle began to whither and die, giving form to Salem and a picture that Charles Xavier would no doubt find familiar.
He had been there before, after all.
The change was so subtle it was almost unnoticeable. Trees melted into buildings, the roar of napalm to the roar of a crowd -- like the top layer of a painting dissolving, only to reveal another hidden underneath. The psis found themselves taking a step from deepest jungle into the middle of bustling town.
Jim stumbled, bumped aside by a scurrying boy who came out of nowhere to bolt towards a massive crowd gathered at the other end of the street. The place was familiar, but not quite . . . right. Nor were the fashions or hairstyles. A group of men standing on the back of a truck clutching a large banner proclaiming "SALEM CENTER WELCOMES ITS HEROES HOME".
This doesn't feel right. The youngest telepath looked askance at Charles and sent, #Are these his memories?#
#No,# Charles sent back, frowning. #Cain was never in Salem Center for this sort of homecoming. But I've seen this mindscape before.# He fell silent, a look of deep concentration on his face as he assessed their surroundings. It was only the most transient outward reflection of the powerful mind at work, seeking to understand what was happening.
Betsy stopped and looked over to the Professor and Haller. Their projected images were bleeding into one another. She shook her head slightly and turned to the gathering as a dull throb pulled at her temples.
Like a mirror twisting and buckling under the strain, Betsy closed her eyes and winced. #This isn't...#
She looked at the assembled group, all their images were jarred and merging within each other. Like wax, they all began to melt.
#The constructs of this place...# A wave of nausea swept through her as the vertigo set in.
#Not Cain.#
-not Cain Nathan heard, in a voice that sounded almost like Betsy's, if Betsy's voice had been slowed down and replayed underwater. The lights went out - it was literally like something had flipped a switch and plunged him into a dark room. It only lasted a heartbeat before they came back up, but Nathan immediately found himself wishing they hadn't.
It was strange, ruddy light, and the mindscape around him had changed. It was a city - Salem Center, maybe, except everything was warped and strange. Ash-colored. And most of it was on fire.
#I did not just fall into fucking Dante's inferno - Jean!# Nathan called out, desperately.
A voice echoed through the space - clearly female, so it had to have been Betsy or some imagining of Cain's - but Jean couldn't make it out. Nathan's cry, though, was clear and sharp with panic, his mind as close and easy to reach as always - which, perhaps, was why Jean didn't realize just how distant the others were becoming.
#I'm here,# she said, staring about. #And no, this isn't Dante's inferno, but it might be Cain's.# There! The road which lead to the mansion's driveway - the fire didn't seem to touch that space, and there buildings seemed to shift all along it, the strange warped distraction morphing into an older, simpler construction. Drawn partly by curiosity and perhaps partly by something else, Jean turned and moved along that path, each step carrying her farther than it ought until she stood at the end of the drive, looking up at the mansion as she remembered it as a child, as Cain obvious remembered it from even before then.
Jim, not yet aware of the separation of Nathan and Jean, instinctively reached for his lover as he saw her stumble, hands to her temples. Her body lost definition as she moved, as if she was stepping into shadow.
He took a step towards her. #Betts, don't leave the--#
The foot that should have come down on asphalt was suddenly back on dirt and leafmould. He was back in the jungle.
Shit.
The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no sense beating himself up over that genius move. It was obvious they weren't in control here; whatever had infested Cain's mind wasn't playing by the normal rules. Calming himself, Jim cast out his mind.
#Professor, can you hear me? I've lost everyone, and I'm back in the jungle. It's turning the psiscape inside-out on us.#
Back in Salem Center, Charles stayed where he was, apparently unmoving, as the others disappeared around him. Though his astral form showed no outward reaction, his mind was reaching outwards at speed, all of his strength and attention gone into trying to grasp the psi-imprints being dragged away from the stability he could provide.
Trying to grasp them, and failing. And in that moment of supreme effort, his own defenses were compromised.
The entity's reaction was instantaneous. It had been looking for the misstep, waiting for it hungry and ready. And when the moment came, the Shadow King lunged. The ravenous maw gaping, bone-white fangs and eyes, all that suddenly appeared before Xavier - dwarfing, swallowing the world.
"You lose, Professor."
Blackness.
----
#Jim.#
Back in the jungle Jim straightened, mind straining. The psi-signature was Charles', but it was strange -- thin, distorted somehow. Jim frowned. The interference from the entity must be extreme if it could interfere with his ability to receive someone as familiar to him as the professor. That didn't bode well.
#Professor, where are you? Can you feel Betsy and the others?#
#Still in the original mindscape. I am remaining here in order to track you.# Again, the sending had an odd, hollow sound, but Charles' eternal calm was the same as ever. #Jim, listen to me. You and the others must serve as my eyes in this. You must find Cain. Do you understand?#
#Yeah.# Feeling more confident, Jim looked around. The jungle had a harsh, unromantacized verisimilitude that bespoke direct experience.
In the distance he could still hear the earlier explosions -- and screams. He had a sad certainty that those, too, had been all too real.
Jim had just been wondering where to begin when something crashed up ahead. He caught only the briefest glimpse of mud-spattered fatigues and red hair, but he recognized the figure instantly.
"Cain!" Jim called, to no avail. The man's mind must be on high alert. Under psychic attack and caught in the middle of a flashback, it was highly unlikely Cain could distinguish his nephew from one of the apparitions. Jim broke into a run, his progress far easier than it would have been in a real jungle; the landscape may have been Cain's, but Jim had years of experience navigating them. There was no need to destroy or change the obstacles in his path. All he had to do was place himself where they weren't.
Jim raced through the jungle, the ghostly images of his alters streaming after him. Every so often the red hair flashed in the distance; Cain seemed to be running blind, but there was a subtle change in the texture. It was akin to climbing a mountain, and how the air became thinner the higher you rose.
#Professor, can you feel this?# Jim sent as he ducked beneath a vine. #Something's not right.#
There was a pause. #Yes. The infiltration has progressed further than I feared. Jim, you must not let him shake you. He is running towards the center of the infection -- and should he reach it, the entity will undermine his very core.#
Whatever reply Jim might have had was interrupted by the appearance of the temple. Old, overgrown and partially sunken, as if the very jungle was trying to swallow it. Swarmed with squalid life, the facade was more vegetation than stone. And Cain was scrambling up the staircase.
#This is where he encountered Gem of Cyttorak,# the professor sent, his calm beginning to fray for the first time. #The entity has been leading him here. He must not touch that gem!#
"Cain, stop!" Jim pounded up the steps, loose stones grinding beneath him. Cain turned, and the face was younger, streaked with grime and gore, still human and completely defenseless. He stood there, frozen with his hands only inches from the gem clasped in the idol's hands, and so he did not as two hands of burning bone emerged from the gem and stretched towards him--
Jim hit the other man in the midsection, throwing them both to the safety of the temple stones, but as Jim's arms closed around the other man's body he realized something was wrong. In the split-second of contact understanding struck. The man he had thrown out of the way was not Cain. The person that had been speaking to him was not the professor.
And that last desperate leap had taken him the final step out of Cain's mind and into the achingly exposed astral plane.
--
He'd done this before, Nathan tried to convince himself. Visited other people's mindscapes. Haroun, and Amanda... he'd helped Amanda, Nathan reminded himself, clinging to that memory. He hadn't had a clue what he was doing that time, but he'd managed to help her, pull her back from the brink. Cain needed help right now, and he wasn't going to let his friend down just because he'd found himself alone. Mindscapes were tricky things. Askani had taught him that much. But they could be navigated.
Still. They were tricky, and this one clearly wasn't stable. There was a volcano emerging off to his left, in a roar of buckling rock and an impressive fountain of lava. Nathan picked the opposite direction, his thoughts extending tentatively around him, searching for some sign of the others or Cain. Letting calming patterns run through his mind, until his astral form stopped flickering and stabilized in Askani armor. In a mindscape like this, he felt the need for protection.
He just wished he knew where the others were. He couldn't 'hear' a damned thing over the crackling flames and the roar of the volcano.
Couldn't see more than a short distance in front of him, through the ash. All he really had to guide him was that tentative telepathic probe, and as it brushed against a faint, unreadable presence, Nathan frowned.
The presence flickered and pulsed, like movement seen out of his peripheral vision, and Nathan felt the first pricklings of dread. It can't be. Not her. But as he kept moving down the remains of the road, towards that elusive presence, a distinct form took shape out of the ash.
"You," Nathan said, a rush of horror and anger flooding through him as Trask met his eyes with that infuriatingly calm, level gaze. "You're doing this?" Working with that telepath she had to have in her back pocket, maybe? It would explain why it hadn't been clear what was going on, why the attack hadn't been straightforward even to Charles...
Trask held out her hands, palms up, her expression never altering. "A shift in tactics," she said. "You seem singularly stubborn - unless those you care about are threatened."
The anger was winning. "I can drive you out of here," Nathan growled. "Just like I did the last time." The Askani armor flickered to stark black.
"You can try. But you have less control here than you think." Her smile was tiny, pitying. "None at all, Nathan. Do you see any patterns?"
There was ash, settling on her clothes. Nathan stared at the evidence of mindscape-dictated physicality for a long moment before What It All Meant penetrated. She was here, in the same way he was here. And so there were more direct ways to force her out.
His clothes shifted back to the greens and browns of Askani wilderness armor, and his psimitar took shape in his hands. Trask's eyes widened slightly and she backed away. "I've had others threaten the people I care about before, Tara. It didn't end well for them, either."
There was something strange in her eyes for a moment - a faint, mocking light. "Bravado. Just bravado. You didn't kill me the last time, Nathan," she said - and she spun on her heel and fled, running away through the rain of ash.
Nathan gritted his teeth and followed. She was not getting away to try this again with someone else. He was so bent on catching her that he was just an instant too slow to react in time when the mindscape started to change.
---
The mansion was echoingly empty as Jean walked through the halls, almost exactly the way she remembered it as a child. That probably should have worried her more - surely there'd been some changes in furnishings and decorations during the thirty odd years between when she and Cain had spent their respective childhoods here. But somehow it didn't seem to matter, anymore than the fact that she was alone, the mind touches of the others having faded away to nothing.
Her footsteps sounded clearly as she walked down the hallway, peering into empty rooms. Parlour after parlour, sitting rooms which, fifty years later, would become classrooms and offices. It was like stepping back in time. The only thing missing, of course, were the people. No students. No Charles or Eric. No Cain.
"Is anyone here?" she called out, wondering if she'd made the wrong choice in coming to this corner of Cain's mind. It had seemed the right thing, the way the road had remained clear, even through the inferno of Salem Center, but now...
"I am, Dr. Grey." The voice was familiar, somehow, but Jean couldn't place it. When she turned to face the man who'd stepped out from behind a door way, though, there was no mistaking his face. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"Mathews," she hissed, eyes narrowing with hate. "What the hell are you doing here?" His hyptnotism trick might explain why Charles hadn't been able to comprehend the nature of the attack on Cain, and certainly he'd no more have been expecting the depths of Cain's mine than he had her own and Jane, but she'd destroyed the portion of his brain controlling his mutation. This shouldn't be possible.
"Oh, Jean... May I call you Jean? I mean, we have been so close..." Smiling the disarmingly charming smile he'd worn when they first met he stepped closer, and Jean instinctively backed away. "Oh, now, don't be like that. Come, Jean, minds are complicated things, you know that. And their ability to recover from dire circumstances is, at times, astounding."
"Well then, we'll just have to break it again, asshole." Her own voice coming from further down the hall behind her completely failed to startle Jean. And she relaxed faintly as her mirror image strode up to stand next to her.
Now it was Mathews' turn to step back, quailing slightly at the force of two identical green glares. "Jane... hello," he said, swallowing visibly.
"You know you can't stand up to us," Jane said, stepping forward as Mathews retreated, and her smile was the sharp, cruel one Jean remembered so well from her mirror. "Stop this shit and get the hell out of here."
"Or what?" Straigtening up he sneered at them, but it was clearly more bravado than anything else.
"Or we make you," Jean said, reaching out and setting her hand on Jane's shoulder. And it wasn't until the other facet of herself turned that disconcerting smile on her that Jean remembered that Mathews had never been the real threat.
---
Betsy stopped and looked over to the Professor and Haller. Their projected images were bleeding into one another. She shook her head slightly and turned to the gathering as a dull throb pulled at her temples. Like a mirror twisting and buckling under the strain, Betsy closed her eyes and winced. "This isn't..." She looked at the assembled group, all their images were jarred and merging within eachother. Like wax, they all began to melt. "The constructs of this place..." A wave of nausea swept through her as the vertigo set in. "Not Cain."
Between the space of one blink and another, Betsy felt the severe pull and tipped forward. Instinctively, she brought her hand up to her face preparing for the fall. Hands shot out of the dark, keeping her steady as she recognized the lanky arms holding her upright. Into her ear, he whispered. "I've got you, babe."
Betsy smiled weakly, her hands going around his neck. "Wanker."
"Keep that up and maybe I'll stop catching you. One of these days, anyway." Jim got her secure on her feet before moving away to assess their surroundings.
Islands of rock drifted above them, suspended by nothing in a sky held
no moon or sun. The only light was the hellish red haze that painted the sky, like sunlight trapped by smoke. A spring flowed upwards into the sky to mingle with the islands of rock. No insects sang. The only sound was the wind, pulling at blacked grass and stunted trees.
Wiping her hair from her face, Betsy took in her surroundings and frowned. Her face pale from the earlier episode gave her an other-wordly glow. "Wow, who knew Cain's brain was this empty?" She sent a sidelong glance to Haller. Her eyes studying the lines of his face, sense memory as she pulled at their familiar bonds. Satisfied, she looked out at the landscape. "So where are we?"
The young man looked around. "He fought an elder god in Limbo once.
Maybe this is it. Either way, we need to get back to the others." Jim turned, extending a hand to her. "Let's go."
Pounding. Betsy placed the heel of her palm to her temple.
"It's so loud in here." The beating sent shockwaves through her body and made her teeth ache. It felt like someone was crashing down on her skull. Pounding Like an invasion force rallying its warriors. Pounding It was too much and somehow elusive. It didn't make sense.
A dull noise, sharp and present right behind her eyes. The source was faint like a memory passing through the ether. "Remind me to take two aspirin when this is all over." She said, sheepishly looking in his direction. Betsy brought her hand away from her face and took his hand. "Tell me you know the way?"
Jim paused, head tilted to the sky, eyes closed. Then he turned and pointed. "That way. The center is that way."
Down the slope there was a massive crater, an unnatural scar in the already bizarre geography of Limbo. What plantlife the place had was blackened at the fringes; within the crater itself there was only ash.
Betsy gaped at the crater. "Down there? Cain and the others are down there?" She took a step back. Gritting her teeth and extending her sense towards the center, Betsy shook her head. The headache overwhelming. "No."
"Betsy." Two hands took her shoulders, stalling her retreat. Jim looked at her steadily, voice calm. "Cain's under attack. The worst part of this place, the place where it's the sickest, darkest -- that's where he's going to be. That's where the others need to go. And so do we." His mismatched eyes captured her own. The blue piercing. The brown drowning.
"Besides," he said quietly, "what could you find in there worse than what's already inside of you?"
"How could you...?" Betsy looked up at him. Anger rippling her features before she looks away and down to the edge of the crater. "I know what's at stake but you have it wrong. Not one thing in that place is of Cain." The heavy pressure on her body as she moved towards it.
She pulled her hand from his and climbed down the outer edge. "There is a darkness there that consumes all and its darker than what's inside of me."
"So you're going to let it have Cain. Is that what you're saying?" The young man knelt, picking up a handful of rocks. The stones were black, half-melted and fused. He looked down at her, his face impassive. "Why are you running? Because it frightens you, or because you're afraid you'll fail?" The stones fell from his hand to roll down the side of the outer edge of the crater like onyx die.
"This isn't like Jamie, Betsy." Jim's eyes slowly settled back on hers. "You can still save Cain."
"I'm not running, you bastard." Betsy exclaimed. "This," she indicated to her climb down the crevice. "Is not running away. This is as direct as I get and if you ever use my brother as an...." Betsy stopped at the base of the crater and stared down a dark cave. "Oh no," she refused. "He's your uncle. You go save him."
Jim climbed over the edge to follow her, shoes scuffing the dirt. The journey seemed to take him less time and effort than it should have.
"I didn't mean it like that," the telepath said as he drew up next to her by the fissure. "I just meant your life hasn't exactly been normal. Things like what you've been through mark you." He reached over and ran his hands through her hair, eyes fixed on the purple strands twinned through his fingers. "Though to be fair, you find ways to mark yourself, too. Even in your own self-image."
Jim let the hair drift through his fingers and turned towards the fissure in the earth. Without the slightest hesitation he lowered himself into the craggy, sloped opening, his figure devoured by shadows. He braced himself against the rock and paused.
"But yeah, Cain is my uncle. And I'm going to find him." He smiled at her, and his teeth flashed white in the darkness. "Am I going to have company?"
His hand reached out of the shadows.
"Idiot," She said with a wry smile and then reached for him. As their hands were about to connect, Betsy felt a sharp shove as a gust of air pushed her back a few feet, leaving her gaping at the darkness. Dust kicked up as she'd abruptly stopped herself from being pushed further back. Already in a defensive pose, her hand raised. Betsy felt the sizzle of psionic energy pooling through her astral body. Looking around her surroundings and back into the cave, Betsy could not sense anything that would cause such a response. But the headache continued to grow in overwhelming swells as her entire body felt awashed in one solitary feeling. Defense.
#"What the hell?"#
Jim gave her a puzzled look, his eyes hollowed by shadows. #What's wrong, Betts?#
#I don't...# No. A voice within. There was a connection to something familiar and then she felt the heat rushing down her back as the psi-blade ignited. Realization. In this plane, her aura, no Betsy's entire essence burned amethyst. The wind whipping around them as she looked at the faux Haller, her eyes glowing with uncontained rage. #Who are you?#
The hand dropped. #Well, that was abrupt. I always thought well-bred British ladies had a little more dedication to manners.# With a sigh the figure stepped back further into the darkness, arms spread. #Fine, you got me. I'm not your boyfriend, but it has been fun wearing him. A few choice parts of him, anyway. He should be glad you didn't get a chance to see how little of a fight he put up. It was embarrassing.#
#Where is he?#
A slow smile spread across the apparition's face. #Wouldn't you like to know.#
She took a step forward but stopped. The sound of her boot crunching, cracking under the dry earth echoed. Something behind him caught her eye. One tendril. No, five. Ten. Fifteen. It was beyond anything she'd had ever seen. Like Medusa awakening, more the tendrils flashed and moved, all emanating from him. Betsy couldn't count the number of connections he manipulated. No human could possibly be that focused.
#What do they call you?#
#Me? Nothing . . . yet.# The smile grew wide in the darkness, impossibly wide. The borrowed form began to distort almost imperceptibly, growing soft and fluid as shadow. #I've never had a reason to reveal myself to cattle before, so no one's ever called me anything. I like to think of myself as a king in waiting.# The tendrils behind the avatar trembled against the firmament of the mindscape. #The king in the shadows.#
Her eyes tracked each bundle, trying to find Haller and her companions in the muck. Every few moments, one red tendril would expose itself and she could almost feel him. Jim.
#Thinking about saving him?# The doppelganger seemed to respond to the unspoken thought like a saw sliding against razor wire. #Hey, feel free to try. The things I could tell you about what I've already done to him, Xavier, Nathan, Jean . . . well, maybe you wouldn't have a problem with Jean, but as far as the people you'd miss are concerned, let's just say I've been pretty creative.# The thing wearing her lover's face leaned forward, the obscene, smile stretched rictus-tight. #I took them. All of them, by myself, and you're one little girl who couldn't even save her own team. What can you do?#
#Well, I'm about to find out.#
Betsy pulled every ounce of psionic energy through her body and channeled it into her psiblade. She felt it as it grew two-fold. Betsy raised her right hand and ran full force towards the anomaly.
There was one other option. But the chance that she could....that her....This could turn out bad but there were no other options available.
#Into the fire.# She pulled her hand back and paused for a moment as she thought she saw Haller smile but it was too late. Betsy was already on top of him. Her fist connected with his skull, she felt his hands wrapped around her wrist to try and stop her.
And then the world went white.
Used on a human mind, the psychic knife could shatter, overload, or obliterate. A single point of devastating psionic power, strong enough to cripple. Enough to kill.
And, standing there with the purple blade pulsing within him, the Shadow King took it all.
In that instant the tendrils it had threaded through the astral plane flared with power -- and snapped tight.
In the fading remnants of a Vietnam jungle the thing that had been Cain turned to teeth and darkness in Jim's arms and tore, and as he screamed the defenses of a lifetime ago surged to contain it--
Elsewhere, Trask whirled towards her pursuer as the Dante-esque version of Salem Center dissolved around them. Nathan reeled backwards, defenses already starting to form. But not in time, and the thing she had become lunged, impaling him on cold black talons--
Jean staggered at the sudden surge of power being pulled away from her, and even as she tried to move away Jane's hand reached up, perfectly manicured fingernails shifting into claws that sank into Jean's wrist, holding her in place. "Now you get your wish, Jeannie girl," it was still her voice, but the eyes which turned to look at her were a swirling darkness that seemed to suck her in --
A whoosh of energy dissipated as Betsy felt the vacuum all around. She closed her eyes as she heard, "Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."
It all teetered on the brink for a second-stretching-into eternity as the Shadow King suddenly felt itself dwarfed, the universe of images, of events, of minds suddenly freezing, as every little detail etched itself on his very being.
The entity stumbled, suddenly unsure that it could handle the burden, the flood of data, the focus split between so many...
And then suddenly it laughed, the low unpleasant sound of darkness and broken glass. It rose, gathering strength and echoing as if the ripples of it were spreading across the Astral Plane like a malevolent wind.
And then, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, the Shadow King smiled and with a snap pulled, the tendrils connecting him to his herd snapping taut.
Power.
The rush of pure, magnificent, unbelievable power suffused it and the entity laughed again, screaming it now, screaming its triumph and promise fulfilled, screaming under the seemingly unbearable pressure and pain and joy and almost orgasmic pleasure - all blended together now, indistinguishable, all part of it.
Psylocke looked on in horror, suddenly and for a brief moment seeing behind the masks, beyond the lies.
Seeing the empty horror at the core and reeling in disgust.
Seeing suddenly the image of the darkness, unshaped and undefined settling comfortably around Cain's mind and peeling it, layer by layer with catlike delight in playing with its prey.
Seeing Marko twist suddenly in agony as the power of the telepaths that came to save him tore at his mind, his own body - a traitor, as the Shadow King channeled the power through it, the sudden spike of the psionics running through Juggernaut's body like a river of pain.
The entity's keening, thick, triumphant laugh, as that of a predator delighting in the joy of the kill - slashed at her, and she staggered, her physical body sprawled comfortably in a leather chair at the brownstone, shuddering in response.
Shadow King sighed, the laughing cutting off with sharp abruptness, his sigh warm and babbling with malice and unsaid promises. And in an almost absent-minded afterthought it reached for Betsy, giving her one last, disdainful push. "Good night, sweet princess..."
Westchester NY, USA. February 6th, 1am-5am.
Shadow King screamed silently inside itself, enraged at its own stupidity. No one who had been made on the Astral Plane could remain ignorant of the careful balance that maintained its foundation, that allowed that very dimension to exist.
His miscalculation had not gone unnoticed by the Plane. And now, it -never calm and stable in the best of time - was raging, the ripples of his fight with Juggernaut growing and gathering force into a gale of pure entropy, raining destruction and chaos in its wake, feeding on itself and growing yet more. The Plane roiled with baleful energy.
The entity had never seen the like.
It was horrifying, it was awesome in its fury and it was beautiful.
But most of all it was completely unpredictable. A result of such a small misstep - and now...
And now, the entity itself was trapped, as much as Cain himself. Too much energy was expended in its initial assault on Marko's mind. Too much of that precious reserve. Too much of it processed through the failing body of Farouk. Disengaging now and trying for another host? Impossible! No time.
Not enough. Never enough. The web it was wrapping around Cain never quite stayed. Always a sliver of understanding that it was all only an illusion remained somewhere deep in Marko's backbrain, allowing him to tear himself free, feeding his rage yet more.
And yet the Shadow King had that power. It was waiting, begging to be used, hovering tantalizingly just at his finger tips, calling to the entity in a siren's voice. Its tendrils buried deep and sure, trembling with need inside dozens of telepaths around the world, waiting to send him power enough to swamp this thug's mind.
So near and so useless!
Farouk's body would never cope with the sudden influx of so much extra energy. Already the Shadow King had been forced to limit itself to minute amounts for months, blocking even Farouk's own powers, and even that had not been enough to stop his physical frame from failing.
And now he was trapped here, shackled to the mind so unexpectedly well protected by the seemingly endless reserves of fury, the rage swirling like a tornado of fire.
His greatest strength and his Achilles heel. For rage consumed as well as protected. Burning out the very self that Marko was trying to protect.
And when the last embers cooled, only an emptiness would remain. A barren wasteland prime for molding.
Shadow King shuddered under yet more blows but laughed.
A roll of the dice, all or nothing.
Who would be left standing in the end - would it be Marko, the entity crushed and stomped into the ground. or the Shadow King inheriting the charred remnants of his mind?
It laughed again, mockingly, into Cain's face. The two giants were still locked together, neither giving an inch, trading blow for blow with no retreat imaginable for either.
And around them the Astral Plane was burning.
---
#Hold to the link,# Charles sent to the others, his voice mental voice calm and steady despite the chaos into which they were descending. #No matter what you see.#
Steadying himself in the mindscape, mask firmly affixed, Jim looked around. They stood in a jungle, lush and exotic with flora he'd never seen before -- and burning. Amidst blackening leaves and trees dripping fire the telepaths stood untouched, and in the distance there was the shudder of an explosion. Fire bloomed over the trees.
From what he knew of Cain's military career, Jim could hazard a guess as to how it had come about. Still, something felt . . . off. The sky seemed too close, heavy, like a thunderstorm about to break, and he didn't think it was a consequence of Cain's subconscious.
And there was something else, almost on the edge of hearing. Jim frowned and looked back at his companions. #Um . . . I know this isn't relevant right now, but is anyone else hearing The Doors?#
"Haha," Betsy laughed rather darkly at a burning bush. "Even at a time like this Cain's sense of humor never ceases to fail." She looked over the assembled group. #What? It's not like I'm questioning his taste in music because seriously, 'This is the End'? If I ever decide to decorate my mind with the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now, you are all more than welcome to put me out of my misery.#
#I love your priorities,# Jim murmured, squinting to see if anything was at the center of the distant conflagration.
#The dangerous thing with a thought like that,# Jean put in idly, turning around in a slow circle to get the full effect of the devastation, #is that with our luck, someone will try to take over your brain and provide the sound effect. Although I promise to follow through on the putting you out of your misery bit, if they do.#
Nathan was sticking close to her, a physical manifestation of the fact that he still felt most comfortable linked to her, of any of the assembled telepaths. #Metaphorical crap,# he sent edgily, his astral form flickering back and forth, street clothes to jungle-pattern fatigues. #Why is it always the metaphorical crap?#
#A defensive reaction, Nathan,# Charles sent soothingly, although the bulk of his attention was clearly on their surroundings. #It can actually tell us a great deal about what's going on.#
Deep inside of Cain's psyche the entity felt their approach and were it able to stretch its non-existent lips in a smile it would have done so.
Finally.
Predictable like clockwork - not that the X-Men had any viable options, in the situation he had presented them with.
At least one part of this monumental fuck-up had gone right.
With a superhuman effort the Shadow King refrained from tugging on the hooks buried deep within the psis that were slowly making their way through the outskirts of Juggernaut's mind. It was not yet the time.
If they were alerted now...
No.
The temptation of those tendrils, each pushing with the power, so much power that it could roll Cain's mind in mere minutes, had to be ignored for now.
The blows of the enraged Marko rocked the entity again and again, but it was long past the first bewildered shock and refused to once again be bullied into losing its focus and concentration.
Wishing, incongruously, that it could pray, the Shadow King began its gambit as it grudgingly gave way under Marko's onslaught.
For sheer power, here in his own mind the former host of Cyttorak was nearly equal of the Shadow King.
But then, psionics were never a game of simple power.
The entity twisted and wove, distracting Marko's attention with an array of images and scenarios, a never-ending carousel of horrors and pain and frustrated hopes, of memories and dreams and nightmares battering at his mind.
Meanwhile a barest amount of its power bled off unnoticed.
Strength. Power. A place for all of them, but in the end the mind was always the battlefield of skill.
A faint change and the jungle thickened slightly, a subtle change that twisted the path running through it, a mere hint of wind to send the fire raging toward the other ways and soon the psis found themselves following a back trail he had so carefully constructed for them.
Worry suffused the entity. All of its preparation, all of its work -so much could go wrong.
It all hinged on Xavier. He was the most experienced of them, he if anyone could sense a trap.
And yet that very experience would betray him.
Reeling and desperately defending itself from the attacks of the seemingly berserk Cain, the Shadow King cast its net a little thinner yet, leading the psis in ever narrowing spiral toward the tether that anchored Cain's mind to the Astral Plane.
Buying the time it needed to complete the trap.
And soon enough the edges of the jungle began to whither and die, giving form to Salem and a picture that Charles Xavier would no doubt find familiar.
He had been there before, after all.
The change was so subtle it was almost unnoticeable. Trees melted into buildings, the roar of napalm to the roar of a crowd -- like the top layer of a painting dissolving, only to reveal another hidden underneath. The psis found themselves taking a step from deepest jungle into the middle of bustling town.
Jim stumbled, bumped aside by a scurrying boy who came out of nowhere to bolt towards a massive crowd gathered at the other end of the street. The place was familiar, but not quite . . . right. Nor were the fashions or hairstyles. A group of men standing on the back of a truck clutching a large banner proclaiming "SALEM CENTER WELCOMES ITS HEROES HOME".
This doesn't feel right. The youngest telepath looked askance at Charles and sent, #Are these his memories?#
#No,# Charles sent back, frowning. #Cain was never in Salem Center for this sort of homecoming. But I've seen this mindscape before.# He fell silent, a look of deep concentration on his face as he assessed their surroundings. It was only the most transient outward reflection of the powerful mind at work, seeking to understand what was happening.
Betsy stopped and looked over to the Professor and Haller. Their projected images were bleeding into one another. She shook her head slightly and turned to the gathering as a dull throb pulled at her temples.
Like a mirror twisting and buckling under the strain, Betsy closed her eyes and winced. #This isn't...#
She looked at the assembled group, all their images were jarred and merging within each other. Like wax, they all began to melt.
#The constructs of this place...# A wave of nausea swept through her as the vertigo set in.
#Not Cain.#
-not Cain Nathan heard, in a voice that sounded almost like Betsy's, if Betsy's voice had been slowed down and replayed underwater. The lights went out - it was literally like something had flipped a switch and plunged him into a dark room. It only lasted a heartbeat before they came back up, but Nathan immediately found himself wishing they hadn't.
It was strange, ruddy light, and the mindscape around him had changed. It was a city - Salem Center, maybe, except everything was warped and strange. Ash-colored. And most of it was on fire.
#I did not just fall into fucking Dante's inferno - Jean!# Nathan called out, desperately.
A voice echoed through the space - clearly female, so it had to have been Betsy or some imagining of Cain's - but Jean couldn't make it out. Nathan's cry, though, was clear and sharp with panic, his mind as close and easy to reach as always - which, perhaps, was why Jean didn't realize just how distant the others were becoming.
#I'm here,# she said, staring about. #And no, this isn't Dante's inferno, but it might be Cain's.# There! The road which lead to the mansion's driveway - the fire didn't seem to touch that space, and there buildings seemed to shift all along it, the strange warped distraction morphing into an older, simpler construction. Drawn partly by curiosity and perhaps partly by something else, Jean turned and moved along that path, each step carrying her farther than it ought until she stood at the end of the drive, looking up at the mansion as she remembered it as a child, as Cain obvious remembered it from even before then.
Jim, not yet aware of the separation of Nathan and Jean, instinctively reached for his lover as he saw her stumble, hands to her temples. Her body lost definition as she moved, as if she was stepping into shadow.
He took a step towards her. #Betts, don't leave the--#
The foot that should have come down on asphalt was suddenly back on dirt and leafmould. He was back in the jungle.
Shit.
The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no sense beating himself up over that genius move. It was obvious they weren't in control here; whatever had infested Cain's mind wasn't playing by the normal rules. Calming himself, Jim cast out his mind.
#Professor, can you hear me? I've lost everyone, and I'm back in the jungle. It's turning the psiscape inside-out on us.#
Back in Salem Center, Charles stayed where he was, apparently unmoving, as the others disappeared around him. Though his astral form showed no outward reaction, his mind was reaching outwards at speed, all of his strength and attention gone into trying to grasp the psi-imprints being dragged away from the stability he could provide.
Trying to grasp them, and failing. And in that moment of supreme effort, his own defenses were compromised.
The entity's reaction was instantaneous. It had been looking for the misstep, waiting for it hungry and ready. And when the moment came, the Shadow King lunged. The ravenous maw gaping, bone-white fangs and eyes, all that suddenly appeared before Xavier - dwarfing, swallowing the world.
"You lose, Professor."
Blackness.
----
#Jim.#
Back in the jungle Jim straightened, mind straining. The psi-signature was Charles', but it was strange -- thin, distorted somehow. Jim frowned. The interference from the entity must be extreme if it could interfere with his ability to receive someone as familiar to him as the professor. That didn't bode well.
#Professor, where are you? Can you feel Betsy and the others?#
#Still in the original mindscape. I am remaining here in order to track you.# Again, the sending had an odd, hollow sound, but Charles' eternal calm was the same as ever. #Jim, listen to me. You and the others must serve as my eyes in this. You must find Cain. Do you understand?#
#Yeah.# Feeling more confident, Jim looked around. The jungle had a harsh, unromantacized verisimilitude that bespoke direct experience.
In the distance he could still hear the earlier explosions -- and screams. He had a sad certainty that those, too, had been all too real.
Jim had just been wondering where to begin when something crashed up ahead. He caught only the briefest glimpse of mud-spattered fatigues and red hair, but he recognized the figure instantly.
"Cain!" Jim called, to no avail. The man's mind must be on high alert. Under psychic attack and caught in the middle of a flashback, it was highly unlikely Cain could distinguish his nephew from one of the apparitions. Jim broke into a run, his progress far easier than it would have been in a real jungle; the landscape may have been Cain's, but Jim had years of experience navigating them. There was no need to destroy or change the obstacles in his path. All he had to do was place himself where they weren't.
Jim raced through the jungle, the ghostly images of his alters streaming after him. Every so often the red hair flashed in the distance; Cain seemed to be running blind, but there was a subtle change in the texture. It was akin to climbing a mountain, and how the air became thinner the higher you rose.
#Professor, can you feel this?# Jim sent as he ducked beneath a vine. #Something's not right.#
There was a pause. #Yes. The infiltration has progressed further than I feared. Jim, you must not let him shake you. He is running towards the center of the infection -- and should he reach it, the entity will undermine his very core.#
Whatever reply Jim might have had was interrupted by the appearance of the temple. Old, overgrown and partially sunken, as if the very jungle was trying to swallow it. Swarmed with squalid life, the facade was more vegetation than stone. And Cain was scrambling up the staircase.
#This is where he encountered Gem of Cyttorak,# the professor sent, his calm beginning to fray for the first time. #The entity has been leading him here. He must not touch that gem!#
"Cain, stop!" Jim pounded up the steps, loose stones grinding beneath him. Cain turned, and the face was younger, streaked with grime and gore, still human and completely defenseless. He stood there, frozen with his hands only inches from the gem clasped in the idol's hands, and so he did not as two hands of burning bone emerged from the gem and stretched towards him--
Jim hit the other man in the midsection, throwing them both to the safety of the temple stones, but as Jim's arms closed around the other man's body he realized something was wrong. In the split-second of contact understanding struck. The man he had thrown out of the way was not Cain. The person that had been speaking to him was not the professor.
And that last desperate leap had taken him the final step out of Cain's mind and into the achingly exposed astral plane.
--
He'd done this before, Nathan tried to convince himself. Visited other people's mindscapes. Haroun, and Amanda... he'd helped Amanda, Nathan reminded himself, clinging to that memory. He hadn't had a clue what he was doing that time, but he'd managed to help her, pull her back from the brink. Cain needed help right now, and he wasn't going to let his friend down just because he'd found himself alone. Mindscapes were tricky things. Askani had taught him that much. But they could be navigated.
Still. They were tricky, and this one clearly wasn't stable. There was a volcano emerging off to his left, in a roar of buckling rock and an impressive fountain of lava. Nathan picked the opposite direction, his thoughts extending tentatively around him, searching for some sign of the others or Cain. Letting calming patterns run through his mind, until his astral form stopped flickering and stabilized in Askani armor. In a mindscape like this, he felt the need for protection.
He just wished he knew where the others were. He couldn't 'hear' a damned thing over the crackling flames and the roar of the volcano.
Couldn't see more than a short distance in front of him, through the ash. All he really had to guide him was that tentative telepathic probe, and as it brushed against a faint, unreadable presence, Nathan frowned.
The presence flickered and pulsed, like movement seen out of his peripheral vision, and Nathan felt the first pricklings of dread. It can't be. Not her. But as he kept moving down the remains of the road, towards that elusive presence, a distinct form took shape out of the ash.
"You," Nathan said, a rush of horror and anger flooding through him as Trask met his eyes with that infuriatingly calm, level gaze. "You're doing this?" Working with that telepath she had to have in her back pocket, maybe? It would explain why it hadn't been clear what was going on, why the attack hadn't been straightforward even to Charles...
Trask held out her hands, palms up, her expression never altering. "A shift in tactics," she said. "You seem singularly stubborn - unless those you care about are threatened."
The anger was winning. "I can drive you out of here," Nathan growled. "Just like I did the last time." The Askani armor flickered to stark black.
"You can try. But you have less control here than you think." Her smile was tiny, pitying. "None at all, Nathan. Do you see any patterns?"
There was ash, settling on her clothes. Nathan stared at the evidence of mindscape-dictated physicality for a long moment before What It All Meant penetrated. She was here, in the same way he was here. And so there were more direct ways to force her out.
His clothes shifted back to the greens and browns of Askani wilderness armor, and his psimitar took shape in his hands. Trask's eyes widened slightly and she backed away. "I've had others threaten the people I care about before, Tara. It didn't end well for them, either."
There was something strange in her eyes for a moment - a faint, mocking light. "Bravado. Just bravado. You didn't kill me the last time, Nathan," she said - and she spun on her heel and fled, running away through the rain of ash.
Nathan gritted his teeth and followed. She was not getting away to try this again with someone else. He was so bent on catching her that he was just an instant too slow to react in time when the mindscape started to change.
---
The mansion was echoingly empty as Jean walked through the halls, almost exactly the way she remembered it as a child. That probably should have worried her more - surely there'd been some changes in furnishings and decorations during the thirty odd years between when she and Cain had spent their respective childhoods here. But somehow it didn't seem to matter, anymore than the fact that she was alone, the mind touches of the others having faded away to nothing.
Her footsteps sounded clearly as she walked down the hallway, peering into empty rooms. Parlour after parlour, sitting rooms which, fifty years later, would become classrooms and offices. It was like stepping back in time. The only thing missing, of course, were the people. No students. No Charles or Eric. No Cain.
"Is anyone here?" she called out, wondering if she'd made the wrong choice in coming to this corner of Cain's mind. It had seemed the right thing, the way the road had remained clear, even through the inferno of Salem Center, but now...
"I am, Dr. Grey." The voice was familiar, somehow, but Jean couldn't place it. When she turned to face the man who'd stepped out from behind a door way, though, there was no mistaking his face. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"Mathews," she hissed, eyes narrowing with hate. "What the hell are you doing here?" His hyptnotism trick might explain why Charles hadn't been able to comprehend the nature of the attack on Cain, and certainly he'd no more have been expecting the depths of Cain's mine than he had her own and Jane, but she'd destroyed the portion of his brain controlling his mutation. This shouldn't be possible.
"Oh, Jean... May I call you Jean? I mean, we have been so close..." Smiling the disarmingly charming smile he'd worn when they first met he stepped closer, and Jean instinctively backed away. "Oh, now, don't be like that. Come, Jean, minds are complicated things, you know that. And their ability to recover from dire circumstances is, at times, astounding."
"Well then, we'll just have to break it again, asshole." Her own voice coming from further down the hall behind her completely failed to startle Jean. And she relaxed faintly as her mirror image strode up to stand next to her.
Now it was Mathews' turn to step back, quailing slightly at the force of two identical green glares. "Jane... hello," he said, swallowing visibly.
"You know you can't stand up to us," Jane said, stepping forward as Mathews retreated, and her smile was the sharp, cruel one Jean remembered so well from her mirror. "Stop this shit and get the hell out of here."
"Or what?" Straigtening up he sneered at them, but it was clearly more bravado than anything else.
"Or we make you," Jean said, reaching out and setting her hand on Jane's shoulder. And it wasn't until the other facet of herself turned that disconcerting smile on her that Jean remembered that Mathews had never been the real threat.
---
Betsy stopped and looked over to the Professor and Haller. Their projected images were bleeding into one another. She shook her head slightly and turned to the gathering as a dull throb pulled at her temples. Like a mirror twisting and buckling under the strain, Betsy closed her eyes and winced. "This isn't..." She looked at the assembled group, all their images were jarred and merging within eachother. Like wax, they all began to melt. "The constructs of this place..." A wave of nausea swept through her as the vertigo set in. "Not Cain."
Between the space of one blink and another, Betsy felt the severe pull and tipped forward. Instinctively, she brought her hand up to her face preparing for the fall. Hands shot out of the dark, keeping her steady as she recognized the lanky arms holding her upright. Into her ear, he whispered. "I've got you, babe."
Betsy smiled weakly, her hands going around his neck. "Wanker."
"Keep that up and maybe I'll stop catching you. One of these days, anyway." Jim got her secure on her feet before moving away to assess their surroundings.
Islands of rock drifted above them, suspended by nothing in a sky held
no moon or sun. The only light was the hellish red haze that painted the sky, like sunlight trapped by smoke. A spring flowed upwards into the sky to mingle with the islands of rock. No insects sang. The only sound was the wind, pulling at blacked grass and stunted trees.
Wiping her hair from her face, Betsy took in her surroundings and frowned. Her face pale from the earlier episode gave her an other-wordly glow. "Wow, who knew Cain's brain was this empty?" She sent a sidelong glance to Haller. Her eyes studying the lines of his face, sense memory as she pulled at their familiar bonds. Satisfied, she looked out at the landscape. "So where are we?"
The young man looked around. "He fought an elder god in Limbo once.
Maybe this is it. Either way, we need to get back to the others." Jim turned, extending a hand to her. "Let's go."
Pounding. Betsy placed the heel of her palm to her temple.
"It's so loud in here." The beating sent shockwaves through her body and made her teeth ache. It felt like someone was crashing down on her skull. Pounding Like an invasion force rallying its warriors. Pounding It was too much and somehow elusive. It didn't make sense.
A dull noise, sharp and present right behind her eyes. The source was faint like a memory passing through the ether. "Remind me to take two aspirin when this is all over." She said, sheepishly looking in his direction. Betsy brought her hand away from her face and took his hand. "Tell me you know the way?"
Jim paused, head tilted to the sky, eyes closed. Then he turned and pointed. "That way. The center is that way."
Down the slope there was a massive crater, an unnatural scar in the already bizarre geography of Limbo. What plantlife the place had was blackened at the fringes; within the crater itself there was only ash.
Betsy gaped at the crater. "Down there? Cain and the others are down there?" She took a step back. Gritting her teeth and extending her sense towards the center, Betsy shook her head. The headache overwhelming. "No."
"Betsy." Two hands took her shoulders, stalling her retreat. Jim looked at her steadily, voice calm. "Cain's under attack. The worst part of this place, the place where it's the sickest, darkest -- that's where he's going to be. That's where the others need to go. And so do we." His mismatched eyes captured her own. The blue piercing. The brown drowning.
"Besides," he said quietly, "what could you find in there worse than what's already inside of you?"
"How could you...?" Betsy looked up at him. Anger rippling her features before she looks away and down to the edge of the crater. "I know what's at stake but you have it wrong. Not one thing in that place is of Cain." The heavy pressure on her body as she moved towards it.
She pulled her hand from his and climbed down the outer edge. "There is a darkness there that consumes all and its darker than what's inside of me."
"So you're going to let it have Cain. Is that what you're saying?" The young man knelt, picking up a handful of rocks. The stones were black, half-melted and fused. He looked down at her, his face impassive. "Why are you running? Because it frightens you, or because you're afraid you'll fail?" The stones fell from his hand to roll down the side of the outer edge of the crater like onyx die.
"This isn't like Jamie, Betsy." Jim's eyes slowly settled back on hers. "You can still save Cain."
"I'm not running, you bastard." Betsy exclaimed. "This," she indicated to her climb down the crevice. "Is not running away. This is as direct as I get and if you ever use my brother as an...." Betsy stopped at the base of the crater and stared down a dark cave. "Oh no," she refused. "He's your uncle. You go save him."
Jim climbed over the edge to follow her, shoes scuffing the dirt. The journey seemed to take him less time and effort than it should have.
"I didn't mean it like that," the telepath said as he drew up next to her by the fissure. "I just meant your life hasn't exactly been normal. Things like what you've been through mark you." He reached over and ran his hands through her hair, eyes fixed on the purple strands twinned through his fingers. "Though to be fair, you find ways to mark yourself, too. Even in your own self-image."
Jim let the hair drift through his fingers and turned towards the fissure in the earth. Without the slightest hesitation he lowered himself into the craggy, sloped opening, his figure devoured by shadows. He braced himself against the rock and paused.
"But yeah, Cain is my uncle. And I'm going to find him." He smiled at her, and his teeth flashed white in the darkness. "Am I going to have company?"
His hand reached out of the shadows.
"Idiot," She said with a wry smile and then reached for him. As their hands were about to connect, Betsy felt a sharp shove as a gust of air pushed her back a few feet, leaving her gaping at the darkness. Dust kicked up as she'd abruptly stopped herself from being pushed further back. Already in a defensive pose, her hand raised. Betsy felt the sizzle of psionic energy pooling through her astral body. Looking around her surroundings and back into the cave, Betsy could not sense anything that would cause such a response. But the headache continued to grow in overwhelming swells as her entire body felt awashed in one solitary feeling. Defense.
#"What the hell?"#
Jim gave her a puzzled look, his eyes hollowed by shadows. #What's wrong, Betts?#
#I don't...# No. A voice within. There was a connection to something familiar and then she felt the heat rushing down her back as the psi-blade ignited. Realization. In this plane, her aura, no Betsy's entire essence burned amethyst. The wind whipping around them as she looked at the faux Haller, her eyes glowing with uncontained rage. #Who are you?#
The hand dropped. #Well, that was abrupt. I always thought well-bred British ladies had a little more dedication to manners.# With a sigh the figure stepped back further into the darkness, arms spread. #Fine, you got me. I'm not your boyfriend, but it has been fun wearing him. A few choice parts of him, anyway. He should be glad you didn't get a chance to see how little of a fight he put up. It was embarrassing.#
#Where is he?#
A slow smile spread across the apparition's face. #Wouldn't you like to know.#
She took a step forward but stopped. The sound of her boot crunching, cracking under the dry earth echoed. Something behind him caught her eye. One tendril. No, five. Ten. Fifteen. It was beyond anything she'd had ever seen. Like Medusa awakening, more the tendrils flashed and moved, all emanating from him. Betsy couldn't count the number of connections he manipulated. No human could possibly be that focused.
#What do they call you?#
#Me? Nothing . . . yet.# The smile grew wide in the darkness, impossibly wide. The borrowed form began to distort almost imperceptibly, growing soft and fluid as shadow. #I've never had a reason to reveal myself to cattle before, so no one's ever called me anything. I like to think of myself as a king in waiting.# The tendrils behind the avatar trembled against the firmament of the mindscape. #The king in the shadows.#
Her eyes tracked each bundle, trying to find Haller and her companions in the muck. Every few moments, one red tendril would expose itself and she could almost feel him. Jim.
#Thinking about saving him?# The doppelganger seemed to respond to the unspoken thought like a saw sliding against razor wire. #Hey, feel free to try. The things I could tell you about what I've already done to him, Xavier, Nathan, Jean . . . well, maybe you wouldn't have a problem with Jean, but as far as the people you'd miss are concerned, let's just say I've been pretty creative.# The thing wearing her lover's face leaned forward, the obscene, smile stretched rictus-tight. #I took them. All of them, by myself, and you're one little girl who couldn't even save her own team. What can you do?#
#Well, I'm about to find out.#
Betsy pulled every ounce of psionic energy through her body and channeled it into her psiblade. She felt it as it grew two-fold. Betsy raised her right hand and ran full force towards the anomaly.
There was one other option. But the chance that she could....that her....This could turn out bad but there were no other options available.
#Into the fire.# She pulled her hand back and paused for a moment as she thought she saw Haller smile but it was too late. Betsy was already on top of him. Her fist connected with his skull, she felt his hands wrapped around her wrist to try and stop her.
And then the world went white.
Used on a human mind, the psychic knife could shatter, overload, or obliterate. A single point of devastating psionic power, strong enough to cripple. Enough to kill.
And, standing there with the purple blade pulsing within him, the Shadow King took it all.
In that instant the tendrils it had threaded through the astral plane flared with power -- and snapped tight.
In the fading remnants of a Vietnam jungle the thing that had been Cain turned to teeth and darkness in Jim's arms and tore, and as he screamed the defenses of a lifetime ago surged to contain it--
Elsewhere, Trask whirled towards her pursuer as the Dante-esque version of Salem Center dissolved around them. Nathan reeled backwards, defenses already starting to form. But not in time, and the thing she had become lunged, impaling him on cold black talons--
Jean staggered at the sudden surge of power being pulled away from her, and even as she tried to move away Jane's hand reached up, perfectly manicured fingernails shifting into claws that sank into Jean's wrist, holding her in place. "Now you get your wish, Jeannie girl," it was still her voice, but the eyes which turned to look at her were a swirling darkness that seemed to suck her in --
A whoosh of energy dissipated as Betsy felt the vacuum all around. She closed her eyes as she heard, "Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."
It all teetered on the brink for a second-stretching-into eternity as the Shadow King suddenly felt itself dwarfed, the universe of images, of events, of minds suddenly freezing, as every little detail etched itself on his very being.
The entity stumbled, suddenly unsure that it could handle the burden, the flood of data, the focus split between so many...
And then suddenly it laughed, the low unpleasant sound of darkness and broken glass. It rose, gathering strength and echoing as if the ripples of it were spreading across the Astral Plane like a malevolent wind.
And then, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, the Shadow King smiled and with a snap pulled, the tendrils connecting him to his herd snapping taut.
Power.
The rush of pure, magnificent, unbelievable power suffused it and the entity laughed again, screaming it now, screaming its triumph and promise fulfilled, screaming under the seemingly unbearable pressure and pain and joy and almost orgasmic pleasure - all blended together now, indistinguishable, all part of it.
Psylocke looked on in horror, suddenly and for a brief moment seeing behind the masks, beyond the lies.
Seeing the empty horror at the core and reeling in disgust.
Seeing suddenly the image of the darkness, unshaped and undefined settling comfortably around Cain's mind and peeling it, layer by layer with catlike delight in playing with its prey.
Seeing Marko twist suddenly in agony as the power of the telepaths that came to save him tore at his mind, his own body - a traitor, as the Shadow King channeled the power through it, the sudden spike of the psionics running through Juggernaut's body like a river of pain.
The entity's keening, thick, triumphant laugh, as that of a predator delighting in the joy of the kill - slashed at her, and she staggered, her physical body sprawled comfortably in a leather chair at the brownstone, shuddering in response.
Shadow King sighed, the laughing cutting off with sharp abruptness, his sigh warm and babbling with malice and unsaid promises. And in an almost absent-minded afterthought it reached for Betsy, giving her one last, disdainful push. "Good night, sweet princess..."
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