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xp_logsDesperate situations result in desperate plans... Using their magic-using network, the Occult Research Team (and Strange) take some very unorthodox measures to try and make things difficult for the Shadow King.
The slight chill and semi-darkness of the empty cathedral felt like a comforting embrace as Bennet knelt in the nave before the altar, his eyes closed and the smooth, polished wood of the rosary beads running through his fingers in a motion so practices it was as unnoticed by the young monk as breathing. He liked being here this time of day, the quit pressing down on him, the deep-set, sad and wise eyes of the Saviour looking down from the Cross into his very soul. The light gleaming darkly in the stained glass of the great windows, imbuing the the church with solemn, heavy majesty.
This was the best time for prayer, he always thought. The time you could almost touch God, if you just listened.
Bennet du Paris smiled, a strangely gentle expression, hidden from the world by the bowed head and the cowl of his cassock. His eyes still closed he mouthed the words, his lips moving soundlessly through the intimately familiar words, the litany of Ave Maria flowing easily and freely as his mind reached out for that peculiar quietness, for the secret center of itself and the idyllic peace that the prayer and meditation brought to him.
He prayed.
***
'This has to be one of the more fucked-up ideas we've had,' was Amanda's thought as she sat opposite Strange and Wanda, a most skeptical Illyana by her side. 'And this is from the house of "let's fling ourselves at a magical hurricane".' Then Strange gave her a look that clearly said he'd gotten pretty much most of that, in intent if not form, and she shut her eyes again, trying to concentrate on clearing her mind as he'd instructed.
Light poured through her closed eyelids, and she heard Strange's voice, tight with effort: "I've got the door. Imagine yourselves passing through it."
"After you," Amanda murmured to the Russian girl beside her. "Since you know the way and all."
The light was familiar to the blonde, but it came in the form of a stepping-disk, flaring up around her from the floor. She simply sank into the other-place, like fading from one place to the next.
Amanda followed, pushing her awareness towards where she could sense Illyana. Light poured over her, reminding her uneasily of the Hellfire Club and Alison's Healing, and then there was a sudden jolt and the sensation of something underfoot that made her jerk her eyes open automatically. Amanda took in the scene, took a deep breath (that wasn't really a breath, given her actual body had been left behind on the floor of the conference room ) and let it out in a soft curse: "Well, this is some fucking weird shite right here."
It was a city - well, maybe it was a city. Strange had said their perceptions would shape their experience of the astral plane (and if that was the case she didn't want to know what Illyana's contribution would be), and so they were standing in a city, but not like any city Amanda had ever seen or even imagined, through the focus of her mutant power. This was a place gone mad, shapes twisting and shifting before the eyes like a heat haze made solid, populated by creatures of dream and nightmare. Lightning flickered and flashed across a sky roiling with blood-red clouds, thunder following soon after like the booming laugh of giants... wait, was that an enormous pair of feet dangling from the hidden heights of the Empire State?
She stepped forward, and pebbles gritted under her boots. Brighton, only not. Brighton had never had mermaids carvorting in the surf. Amanda blinked, and the fantasy was overlaid with harsh reality, an oil spill coating irridescent scales and clogging delicate gills, clumping seaweed-frond hair. The mermaids flopped helplessly, choking and dying and Amanda scrubbed at her eyes. "This is so completely fucked up."
Illyana crossed her arms to hide the jagged claws that had replaced her fingernails. "That's because normal people don't even think about coming here. It's just for the freaks." It felt cold; she knew from the last time that her skin was too pale, but she hoped it had toned down a little, given the company.
"You're telling me." Amanda glanced at Illyana, frowned briefly, then looked away again. Something wasn't right, but nothing was, here. "I'm guessing there's a point this'll work better than elsewhere..." she began, taking another step away from the oily water. Red dirt appeared under her feet, and the buildings were replace by towers of stone - weirdly, lights gleamed from holes in their sides, like prehistoric skyscrapers. "Closer to the beastie?"
"It's this way. I think." Illyana took a few steps forward, trying to find the long, spidery tentacles she'd found before. Then, suddenly, there they were: She could feel them stretching from horizon to horizon. "There," she said, tilting her chin in the right direction, since she couldn't point.
Amanda squinted, trying to see. "Where...?" she began, wondering why Illyana was doing the thing with the chin pointing. "I can't..." Then she blinked, eyes watering. "I think I can... the wobbly bit over there, where everything's..." She made a vague gesture. "Weird?"
"That's it," Illyana said grimly, starting to walk again. "Creepy, huh?"
The two set forth, making their way carefully through the dream of God gone mad. The Plane around them heaved, trapped into the never-ending flux, all the nightmares come to life at once, the change-never-ending. Fed now by the energies of psies that tried to fight it, the Shadow King was drawing ever closer to rooting itself in the former host of an Elder God.
And the ripples of his progress were shaking the foundations of the Astral Plane, the very fabric of the collective subconscious rent with terror and pain and anger, as the archetypes of magic and science were being thrown into vortex of chaos, in a clumsy attempt to forge something altogether new and never meant to walk upon the Earth.
The collective bogeymen of humanity were given form and age-old fears battled the forgotten terrors from the dim past of the Mankind. Prince Charming crossed his sword with the Machine shaped into a terrifyingly grotesque parody of human form, the Fates drew their knitting back as the Geek grinned at them over his laptop, and the dragons screamed somewhere in the sky and fell like meteors, as the forever-lurking horror of the post-industrial world blossomed, bathing the horizon in the malevolently white light of nuclear explosion.
Magic and Science grappled, thrown together by the forces beyond their control, their deadlock melding them both into a greater whole, into something new.
Unless the balance could be tilted...
***
It's never been quite like this before. Never...
The rosary felt distantly strange in his clammy hand, slick with sweat. Bennet's tongue darted out wetting his upper, lit, the smooth flow of Latin uninterrupted. He could sense his mind stretching and folding in upon itself at the same time. His body suddenly a heavy, unwieldy burden holding him down, locking him in. And somewhere, so close, so incredibly close, the was something searching for him, screaming out to him, reaching for his soul...
He prayed.
In this plane, Wanda and Strange begin the ritual, and everything seems to be going to plan. Until the inevitable.
***
Shoes, in the corner.
Jacket, slung on the back of a conference chair.
A bout of previous stretching that had gotten her as comfortable and as relaxed as possible, considering the circumstances.
And now she sat in the middle of the circle, lotus style, as boneless as she could get before she fell over. While the other three had prepared the room for the spell, Wanda had ignored all of them and the hurried preparations. The meditation had been easy to fall back into, a comforting presence especially considering the agitation and high stress levels they had been previously dealing with but she'd prevented herself from falling in too deeply, yet.
As soon as she spied the girls go limp, though, Wanda's breathing dropped and her eyes closed half-way as she fell deeper into the meditative state. In her mind, she was weaving – a string of grey for Illyana (ice, sorrow, Russia), a string of tempered brown for Amanda (strength, conviction, grounding) and a string of gold for Stephen (wisdom, friendship, unwavering). She played them almost like the strings of chaos, imagining being the center, loops of colors loosely around her fingers, arms and hands; separate but bound to her.
A low ragged breath escaped Strange as Illyana and then Amanda had crossed over, and slowly he opened his eyes. With Wanda acting as the anchor point for all three of them, he had the energy and attention to spare on the next part of the plan - collecting together the energy of as many magic users they'd been able to track down and convince. It had been surprising, how forthcoming they had been, but he suspected that it was mostly out of self-preservation. With this presence co-opting the former vessel of Cyttorak, it would only be a matter of time before it adapted itself to the magic still residing in Marko and sought out more.
Reaching out a trembling hand, he hit the 'call' button on the conference call set up that had been arranged around the circle, speakers at three points of a triangle overlaying it.
"You have joined the conference," a woman's voice told him cheerily, and he winced. Technology. The voice informed him three more times that 'participant has joined the conference', and he resisted the urge to smash the infernal thing.
There was a slight snort from Wanda, though she didn't bother opening her eyes to look at him. Most of her attention couldn't be diverted from the mental weaving but she was aware enough of what was going on around her. "I always did hate that thing," she murmured, fingers twitching slightly in silent pantomime.
"Magic goes corporate," he replied softly, his answering smile more of a grimace. Too much of his personal energies were already being expended, keeping the way open. "I hope everyone's sitting comfortably," he said, raising his voice so the other three magic users, leaders in their fashion of communities in three central points, could hear. "Is everyone ready?"
Assent in three different accents of English. "Very well, let us begin." He reached forward, and picked up the central console of the phone as it sat beneath the portal. "Wanda, I apologize in advance - this could get a bit... messy."
She just sighed, sounding very put upon. "You break it, you buy it," Wanda told him as sternly as she could. Mentally, she strengthened her grip on the strings, pulling them through more and more complicated arrangements. Her mental self was nearly covered in the three colors and it was exactly what she was aiming for. It might just be a mental exercise to her but it was strengthening the connection between the four with every second.
"Well, you did say you hated this thing," he replied, with a slight eyebrow quirk, before placing the console in Wanda's lap and then laying his hand on it. "Don't try to hold onto the energy - it's tagged for Amanda's chanelling spell and it'll only weaken you. Focus on the three of us as people instead," he advised, before closing his eyes again. "On the count of three, ladies and gentlemen," he instructed. "One. Two. Three..."
As soon as the word ‘three’ faded, a golden light exploded from the conference phone, pulsating out of every opening it could find, bringing with it an almost uncomfortable warmth in her lap. Wanda sucked in a deep breath, the light burning strange images into her retinas, and struggled from there to simply ignore it. The imagined strings in her mind echoed in answer, the tempered brown one glistening to almost copper in response. The power was unfamiliar to her so Wanda concentrated on drawing only the familiar to herself. Amanda’s laugh in the office, the look on Illyana’s face in Africa, the feel of an arm across her waist as she slept; drawn together in a cat’s cradle between her mental hands and stretched taut.
Beyond that, everything else faded into the background.
***
He was flying.
Ecstasy filled him, his heart overflowing with joy. He could feel the vibrations of the very world running through him in tiny tremors, the Vale of Tears giving way to the brilliant light that seemed ti suffuse his every molecule.
So that's what it felt like touching the Divine, he thought absently, and reached out.
***
Energy illuminated everything, pouring into Amanda; the entire place went red-hot. Illyana could feel the difference: It was written in the subtle shift of everything around them, like Ikea furniture suddenly locking into place, something she understood without words. Yet -
Was Amanda supposed to have that much magic at one time? Was it safe?
Amanda wouldn't have been entirely sure it was safe if Illyana had voiced the concern. Then again, when had what they did ever been? Her back burned suddenly, the jolt locking her into place with a jerk. Smoke wisped up from her jacket - or the representation of her jacket, the same one Candra had destroyed - and she gritted her teeth at the pressure building in her head. "This better not give me any more brain damage, or Moira and Dr. Curt're gunna be pissed off," she grated.
"Oh, for God's sake," Illyana breathed, feeling something pull, like she was - what? She watched Amanda, apprehension mounting with every breath and every curl of smoke, until finally she felt as though she couldn't take it anymore; and at that moment, without meaning to, she moved, hand darting out, and she pulled, wrenching it out of Amanda's chest, using all the strength she had, completely unaware of the other girl. It - the Soulsword. And with equal certainty, she knew what to do next, so she lifted the sword above her head, and, swinging down, plunged it into the Astral Plane, striking for the heart.
Amanda cried out at the wrenching sensation, feeling the power pouring into her suddenly diverted out again. 'Where the fuck did that come from?' she thought briefly, only remaining on her feet because the power had locked her in place. As the Soulsword hit the 'ground' however, it was like a nova had gone off behind Amanda's eyes, energy exploding out across the plane, forcing a kind of order on the increasing chaos.
She shuddered but held it, directing that terrible flow, feeding it recklessly into the Archetypes of Magic...
And the Shaman smiled, the wise old face crinkling in delight as he stood over the prone form of the Scientist.
The Soldier grunted in surprise, the Warrior's sword sliding into him with a wet, final sound.
The Trickster laughed, and the anti-Hero screamed...
***
He was drowning. The pain wracking his very Self.
His mortal body, the vessel of flesh and sin could not feel it, he has left it behind, so far behind, but his mind, his spirit buckled under the intense pressure of...
What?
The words escaped him. There was no description for the immensity of it, the majesty and the glory. He could feel the connection, the echoes of the entire world seemed to reverberate endlessly through him. No longer the gentle vibrations, but the great, shuddering tremors full of meaning, full of knowledge, full of hopes, full of secrets and prayers and wishes and fears and dreams!
Too much.
His mind was too small, too limited. Too human.
The agony receded suddenly, quited into a dull, throbbing ache and he swallowed convulsively, suddenly realizing that he had a body again, of sorts. That there was ground under his feet.
Cracked and bleeding the desolation stretched into eternity. It was beutiful, even in its terrible, bleak wrongness.
He the pain coming off of it in waves, buffeting him, tugging at him, begging.
Begging him for help.
Him.
Things get messy.
The circle was an island of calm in a swirling vortex of chaos - papers, books, styrofoam coffee cups, plastic stirrers, jackets a pizza box... whatever wasn't fixed down and light enough to be caught up in the backlash of the energy pouring from the phone console flapped around the room in an wild dance. The lights flickered madly on and off, adding to the scene, and a low sound, not quite a moan, escaped from Strange. By the light of the energy siphoning up into the portal, his face looked ashen.
In the circle itself, Wanda's face was slack, almost as if she were sleeping but it was obvious by the movement of her eyes under their lids that she wasn't. There was no physical pain for her but more of a mental weariness – the others were using her to ground themselves, drawing on their reserves and hers. A deep breath and she recaptured an end of a string that tried to slip away. Unacceptable. She wound it tighter around her wrist, settling it back on her skin with a sharp tug of defiance.
Under Strange's hand, the conference phone was growing increasingly warm with a smell of overheated electronics and ozone. "We need more," he grated - and somehow, despite the unorthodox use the phone was being put to, there were answering responses from the speakers, voices tight and strained. The energy hitched, pulsed, then increased, pouring up into a portal that was noticeably smaller than it had been originally.
Wanda frowned. The others were losing ground, she realized, either unable to ground themselves or experiencing problems with their foundations. And without their help, they were done for. Concentrating heavily, she carefully stripped her left arm of the strings and looped them over her right. She shuddered slightly at the shift but forced her eyes open as she slid her hand on top of Stephen's, on top of the conference phone. With a steady cadence she said her name – her full Name, hoping to catch everyone's attention.
"I need their Names," she said softly. These were strangers to her and she doubted she would be of any good – unless they had a connection. And according to her research, the sharing of Names just might be able to achieve that.
There was a pause, and then first one disembodied voice, then another, speaking so faintly it was barely audible. Names whispered one by one, until it came back to Strange. Looking into her eyes, he leaned forward, and murmured into her ear, ending it with the briefest touch of lips to her hair. "So brave." His voice was growing thready. "Careful."
Wanda's lips quirked slightly into a brief, warm smile before her features went blank again. Back in her mind once more, she checked to make sure the three strings were still secure – there was no sense in trying this only to lose them that way. And then, one by one, she Named them, imagining the words ringing off the walls in an echo that grew with every second. Even though it was internally, they were waiting for the ripple of power that the naming invoked and reacted accordingly.
For each name, she tried to envision the string – but it was different now. Bound only by that knowledge, what appeared instead were three long strands of barbed wire, the silver color dulled to a gun metal gray. Gritting her teeth, Wanda reached for them, twisting them around her left arm (closest to the heart, the focal point of her life energy) and with no time for hesitation, yanked the ends closed around each other. They bit into her arm and while she knew there was no physical pain, she still couldn't stop the chuff of noise escaping from her lips as she grounded all them to her.
The energy pulsed again, then flared into new brilliance. Grounded by Wanda, the three unseen magic users were able to pull further on their people, extending the net of donation. The phone console started to smoke slightly, the heat of it searing Strange's hand. The winds picked up, carrying with them the babble of a dozen languages and scents from across the world: dust from a distant African plain, jazz music from New Orleans, frying sesame oil and soy from a food stall in China, the tang of engine exhaust and pigeons from London... Strange cried out as the spell came to a crescendo, a palpable wave of heat and light exploding upwards into the portal.
It was like a vacuum had occurred. The pieces of conference room that had been spinning around dropped to the ground; a blanket of silence covered everything; and where there was light, now there was only dark. Wanda struggled to capture her breath, hissing slightly as the hold from the unexpected three tightened slightly. She was about to ask if it had worked when the representations of the people pulling on her suddenly were all pulled tight, almost to the breaking point.
She closed her 'hands' on them, the barbed wire biting more and the strings wrapping tighter and tighter around her right wrist, as she gasped, "Stephen!", in warning.
Above them the portal flexed, bulging outwards and then reversing, sucking up towards the ceiling. And then it gaped wide. There was a brief moment in which both of them had time to look in horror upwards, and then the portal belched forth... chaos. Psionic energy, mixed with magical, writhing and twisting in torment, poured down upon them.
***
The plan had worked.
The Astral Plane bent by the sheer mass of the sudden onslaught of the magic users, bowed to the brutal force.
It has been desperately looking for an outlet, for a vehicle that would allow it to strike back against the threat it felt within itself.
But without the telepaths to define it and give it form, the terrible potential of the Undermind remained impotent, staggering blindly and helplessly in search of its target.
Until the mages came.
The massive energy produced by the humanity's collective Dream buckled, shuddered and finally gave way.
Like a dammed, redirected river it flowed reluctantly into the new channel. The form of it changing, the archetypes casting back toward the dim, forgotten past. To the Age before science. When spells not atoms defined the world, when the spirits mocked Man from every brook and under every bush, when fearful and uncertain the Humanity huddled around the fire, warding away the darkness of the unknown.
The Astral Plane calmed, slowly and reluctantly, like a skittish colt, the storms wracking it subsiding and revealing something new in their wake.
The universe defined for so long by the mind of humanity born of the Industrial Revolution and the Science's triumph suddenly gave way to the realm seen through the eyes of mages, whose energy poured into the vacuum left by the telepaths defined and twisted the Astral Plane, rejecting the bound placed on them for centuring and subconsciously as much as purposefully painting across the suddenly available canvas their own Dream.
Consensus changed, the markers and symbols transforming, as the mages brought back that which defined their life, which gave their magic focus, the vessels through which they controlled and understood the world
The Sun disappeared, the burning mass of hydrogen giving way as Ra raised his staff and smiled in grim approval.
The Moon's chariot sped over the horizon, the booming laugh of its driver carrying on the wind, that was the breath of a trapped God, and was echoed by the howl of Wild Hunt's hounds. The Sky titled suddenly as Atlas shrugged, lowering one arm to scratch his nose, shooing away Fenris. The loa giggled, while the winged serpent slithered across the edge of the Humanity's understanding.
The new, yet old, balance held. The rules changing in mid blink, the old answers finding no questions, the old laws trapping the unwary in the prison of their own misconception.
Except of course there was but one telepath still remaining on the plane. All others have been driven from it by the raging cataclysm, expet for the Shadow King. Standing in the midst of the fury, in the eye of the hurricane the entity survived unscathed, able to focus on its quest.
But from this there was no defense.
From this there was no escape.
The sadden calm caught it by surprise and then, without warning the Astral Plane, the world it has made its own for decade stopped making sense.
The entity's scream echoed across the Plane and then was suddenly cut off as it was ruthlessly cast out by the dimension that no longer understood it.
And with it went the paradoxical keystone of the new balance. For without the threat of the emergent hybrid, without the growing malignant force born of Cain Marko's body and Amahl Farouk's disease, the mages' force alone was not enough to maintain the new Consensus.
The storms, chained so securely just moments ago, broke free again, their fury seemingly stronger tenfold as the Undermind raged against the mages.
Mages who suddenly found themselves trapped, unable to disconnect. Their very presence fueling the the feedback loop of the two incompatible Paradigms battling each other, two immense forces clashing, their impact too vast for the Astral Plane to absorb.
***
The world was collapsing.
Or that's what it seemed like. It was crumbling, pieces literally coming free, the ground disintegrating beneath their feet - Illyana could hardly feel which direction went home, the connection there stretched so tight that it could hardly be discerned. "How the hell do we get out of here?" she shouted, raising her voice above the howling wind and high, keening sound of bending matter breaking and rebreaking.
"Follow the thread!" Amanda screamed back above the groaning of structures twisting inside out. She indicated the fine line of coppery brown leading from her wrist to... elsewhere. It had thinned down to a barely visible line. "Wanda's anchor!"
She almost lost it: She was almost taken by the Astral Plane, eaten alive. She could feel it in every screaming nerve, every uneven breath, closer and closer, but -- there. That was it. She just had to follow it -- don't let it go again, idiot -- and it would take them home.
Seeing Illyana stumble, nearly lost, Amanda paused in her own painfully slow inching back towards the source of the thread. She stretched her hand out behind her for Illyana to take. "C'mon!" she called. "We'll make it easier for Wanda to pull us back if we're together!"
Shit. Illyana knew that she had to take Amanda's hand, but she still hesitated, long enough that it mattered, and she had to reach out anyway, grasping Amanda's hand with her rough, callused palms. Almost defiantly, she made no comment on the deformed fingers, any more than she had on her dead-looking skin. And they made their way closer to home like that.
'C'mon Boss Lady, bring us home.' The thought was as much of a prayer as anything.
Amanda and Illyana get free, leaving chaos behind them. But all is not lost.
Between one moment and another, the extra passengers suddenly were no longer there, cut off by the feedback loop from the Astral Plane. Wanda grimaced, feeling the strain from just her original three. Whatever was going on, it was big and they were all going to be caught up in it if something didn't happen. Fast.
"Enough," Wanda gasped, a red light exploding from her hands, "is enough."
It wouldn't have worked if they hadn't been using her life force to stabilize six people at one point. It shouldn't have worked but chaos ability was known for bending the obvious if it was inconvenient. And, perhaps unknown to the entity they were fighting, it gave Wanda the added benefit of screwing with psionics. It snapped down the lines that connected her to Illyana, Amanda and Stephen, a red thread intersecting all three of their strings like an open vein.
Stephen groaned and pushed himself upright from where he'd been knocked flat by the burst of energy from the astral plane. Blood was trickling freely from his nose and ears, and his complexion had gone grey - in that moment, he looked like an old, old man. The astral plane was in agony, lashing out against the artificial order they'd forced upon it - Stephen felt as though his mind was turning inside-out. "Wanda..." he grated. "Let me go, focus on them. I can hold the portal."
Shuddering, she did as he asked and the pressure eased up slightly. Now, holding one string in each hand, powers on full and flooding the connection that the women were using to stay in the Astral Plane. Right as the lines were about to snap, Wanda mentally hauled backwards, using the connection in an attempt to break them away from the seething mess.
The portal flexed again, and a hand appeared, flailing wildly. Another tug from Wanda and there was a shoulder and the top of a blonde head. One more and Amanda - nose bleeding, eyes wild - appeared. She struggled out of the portal, falling onto the floor with a groan and then sat up, rubbing at the blood drying under her nose. "I don't think it worked," she croaked, painfully aware of how obvious that was.
"What happened?" Wanda demanded, mentally taking one step away from the meditative state, releasing her mental exercise on Amanda's 'string'.
Amanda shook her head. "'Yana first," she said. "Everything's gone to hell in there."
Only through years of practice was Wanda able to refocus her breathing - between knowing things were going pear shaped and the burn feeling radiating from the conference phone, it was difficult. With only one person latched onto her using the spell, though, it made her concentration a bit better and she focused on reeling Illyana's essence back towards her own. Back towards home.
The portal shrank slightly, and alarmed, Amanda glanced at Strange. His face was chalky white, and with the residual magic in her system, she could see how low his energies were. Shuffling over, she lay her hands over his, lending him what she had left. "Keep hold just a little more, Doc," she told him.
Illyana stumbled through the portal, sheet-white and shaking with effort, as though she'd made a final push. Behind her, the portal snapped closed, Strange collapsing unconscious. She leaned against the table, catching her breath, catching Wanda's eyes in a silent thank you before looking away. "Well," she said, after a moment, "that was even more of a disaster than normal."
***
He didn't stumble onto the Astral Plane as many people did, by accident -most in their dreams; a few semi-consciously searching for the everlasting Question or Nirvana.
Fewer yet were able to process the experience, to catalogue it. Most lacked either the training or the experience that would have given them the tools necessary to understand, to come to terms what he was dealing with.
Madness waited for some. Other locked the experience away, hiding rather than being trapped by the immensity of it.
But the wounded, battered Undermind - its defenses torn to shreds, the horror of the hybrid yet unborn, the pressure of the magical energy wrenching it into alien, unfamiliar, unacceptable form - reached out for him. Disdaining mages and abandoned by psies it locked onto Bennet du Paris.
A man.
Not a psi.
Not a mage.
Just a man in search of the Truth.
A mind dedicated to the search for the Greater Harmony. A clean and ordered, uncluttered life of meditation and discourse.A monk, divorced from life and its temptations, seeking peace in prayer, reaching out for the undefinable, searching for the perpetually hidden. He groped toward the edges of the Dream, until it suddenly reached back, the Undermind flaring and manifesting through him.
He stood alone, bewildered and terrified. His astral from pushed and pulled by the great forces roiling the Astral Plane.
The scathing desert wind flayed him, and he drowned within the enraged monsoon.
He wept, uncomprehending but aware of the pain surrounding him. Not his own. But the world's.
The sick wrongness of it all beat at him, pulsating deep within his mind. The Astral Plane, the undermind, psionics, collective subconscious - none of those terms would have meant anything to du Paris were he to hear them.
The world went mad around him, beating at him, howling in misery, its agony sweeping through him, driving him to his knees.
He wept, his lips moving soundlessly through the intimately familiar words, the litany of Ave Maria flowing easily and freely as his mind reached out for that peculiar quietness, for the secret center of itself and the idyllic peace that the prayer and meditation brought to him.
He was not the One. He could not do what it wanted. He wasn't worthy!
The tears blurred his vision and for a brief second he thought he saw Her.
She had his mother's face.
Strange... he always imagined her younger, not greying hair, a face aged by worry lines and kindly eyes.
The Latin halted and he sobbed, reaching out for her. "Mere... I can't. It's not me they want!"
The infinitely familiar smile, the lips quirking even after an exhaustion of the day's toil. Like always she reached out for him, the coolness of her fingers feeling like balm on his cheek.
"Of course it is."
He blinked. The image disappearing as he knew it would, and yet the feeling of her hand upon his face lingering...
He flinched. The wrongness surrounded him, the pain of the world unbearable.
He smiled.
And suddenly it was the simplest thing in the world to reach within himself for that awesome power coiled there and let it out.
Painting a pattern that wanted to be drawn.
The slight chill and semi-darkness of the empty cathedral felt like a comforting embrace as Bennet knelt in the nave before the altar, his eyes closed and the smooth, polished wood of the rosary beads running through his fingers in a motion so practices it was as unnoticed by the young monk as breathing. He liked being here this time of day, the quit pressing down on him, the deep-set, sad and wise eyes of the Saviour looking down from the Cross into his very soul. The light gleaming darkly in the stained glass of the great windows, imbuing the the church with solemn, heavy majesty.
This was the best time for prayer, he always thought. The time you could almost touch God, if you just listened.
Bennet du Paris smiled, a strangely gentle expression, hidden from the world by the bowed head and the cowl of his cassock. His eyes still closed he mouthed the words, his lips moving soundlessly through the intimately familiar words, the litany of Ave Maria flowing easily and freely as his mind reached out for that peculiar quietness, for the secret center of itself and the idyllic peace that the prayer and meditation brought to him.
He prayed.
***
'This has to be one of the more fucked-up ideas we've had,' was Amanda's thought as she sat opposite Strange and Wanda, a most skeptical Illyana by her side. 'And this is from the house of "let's fling ourselves at a magical hurricane".' Then Strange gave her a look that clearly said he'd gotten pretty much most of that, in intent if not form, and she shut her eyes again, trying to concentrate on clearing her mind as he'd instructed.
Light poured through her closed eyelids, and she heard Strange's voice, tight with effort: "I've got the door. Imagine yourselves passing through it."
"After you," Amanda murmured to the Russian girl beside her. "Since you know the way and all."
The light was familiar to the blonde, but it came in the form of a stepping-disk, flaring up around her from the floor. She simply sank into the other-place, like fading from one place to the next.
Amanda followed, pushing her awareness towards where she could sense Illyana. Light poured over her, reminding her uneasily of the Hellfire Club and Alison's Healing, and then there was a sudden jolt and the sensation of something underfoot that made her jerk her eyes open automatically. Amanda took in the scene, took a deep breath (that wasn't really a breath, given her actual body had been left behind on the floor of the conference room ) and let it out in a soft curse: "Well, this is some fucking weird shite right here."
It was a city - well, maybe it was a city. Strange had said their perceptions would shape their experience of the astral plane (and if that was the case she didn't want to know what Illyana's contribution would be), and so they were standing in a city, but not like any city Amanda had ever seen or even imagined, through the focus of her mutant power. This was a place gone mad, shapes twisting and shifting before the eyes like a heat haze made solid, populated by creatures of dream and nightmare. Lightning flickered and flashed across a sky roiling with blood-red clouds, thunder following soon after like the booming laugh of giants... wait, was that an enormous pair of feet dangling from the hidden heights of the Empire State?
She stepped forward, and pebbles gritted under her boots. Brighton, only not. Brighton had never had mermaids carvorting in the surf. Amanda blinked, and the fantasy was overlaid with harsh reality, an oil spill coating irridescent scales and clogging delicate gills, clumping seaweed-frond hair. The mermaids flopped helplessly, choking and dying and Amanda scrubbed at her eyes. "This is so completely fucked up."
Illyana crossed her arms to hide the jagged claws that had replaced her fingernails. "That's because normal people don't even think about coming here. It's just for the freaks." It felt cold; she knew from the last time that her skin was too pale, but she hoped it had toned down a little, given the company.
"You're telling me." Amanda glanced at Illyana, frowned briefly, then looked away again. Something wasn't right, but nothing was, here. "I'm guessing there's a point this'll work better than elsewhere..." she began, taking another step away from the oily water. Red dirt appeared under her feet, and the buildings were replace by towers of stone - weirdly, lights gleamed from holes in their sides, like prehistoric skyscrapers. "Closer to the beastie?"
"It's this way. I think." Illyana took a few steps forward, trying to find the long, spidery tentacles she'd found before. Then, suddenly, there they were: She could feel them stretching from horizon to horizon. "There," she said, tilting her chin in the right direction, since she couldn't point.
Amanda squinted, trying to see. "Where...?" she began, wondering why Illyana was doing the thing with the chin pointing. "I can't..." Then she blinked, eyes watering. "I think I can... the wobbly bit over there, where everything's..." She made a vague gesture. "Weird?"
"That's it," Illyana said grimly, starting to walk again. "Creepy, huh?"
The two set forth, making their way carefully through the dream of God gone mad. The Plane around them heaved, trapped into the never-ending flux, all the nightmares come to life at once, the change-never-ending. Fed now by the energies of psies that tried to fight it, the Shadow King was drawing ever closer to rooting itself in the former host of an Elder God.
And the ripples of his progress were shaking the foundations of the Astral Plane, the very fabric of the collective subconscious rent with terror and pain and anger, as the archetypes of magic and science were being thrown into vortex of chaos, in a clumsy attempt to forge something altogether new and never meant to walk upon the Earth.
The collective bogeymen of humanity were given form and age-old fears battled the forgotten terrors from the dim past of the Mankind. Prince Charming crossed his sword with the Machine shaped into a terrifyingly grotesque parody of human form, the Fates drew their knitting back as the Geek grinned at them over his laptop, and the dragons screamed somewhere in the sky and fell like meteors, as the forever-lurking horror of the post-industrial world blossomed, bathing the horizon in the malevolently white light of nuclear explosion.
Magic and Science grappled, thrown together by the forces beyond their control, their deadlock melding them both into a greater whole, into something new.
Unless the balance could be tilted...
***
It's never been quite like this before. Never...
The rosary felt distantly strange in his clammy hand, slick with sweat. Bennet's tongue darted out wetting his upper, lit, the smooth flow of Latin uninterrupted. He could sense his mind stretching and folding in upon itself at the same time. His body suddenly a heavy, unwieldy burden holding him down, locking him in. And somewhere, so close, so incredibly close, the was something searching for him, screaming out to him, reaching for his soul...
He prayed.
In this plane, Wanda and Strange begin the ritual, and everything seems to be going to plan. Until the inevitable.
***
Shoes, in the corner.
Jacket, slung on the back of a conference chair.
A bout of previous stretching that had gotten her as comfortable and as relaxed as possible, considering the circumstances.
And now she sat in the middle of the circle, lotus style, as boneless as she could get before she fell over. While the other three had prepared the room for the spell, Wanda had ignored all of them and the hurried preparations. The meditation had been easy to fall back into, a comforting presence especially considering the agitation and high stress levels they had been previously dealing with but she'd prevented herself from falling in too deeply, yet.
As soon as she spied the girls go limp, though, Wanda's breathing dropped and her eyes closed half-way as she fell deeper into the meditative state. In her mind, she was weaving – a string of grey for Illyana (ice, sorrow, Russia), a string of tempered brown for Amanda (strength, conviction, grounding) and a string of gold for Stephen (wisdom, friendship, unwavering). She played them almost like the strings of chaos, imagining being the center, loops of colors loosely around her fingers, arms and hands; separate but bound to her.
A low ragged breath escaped Strange as Illyana and then Amanda had crossed over, and slowly he opened his eyes. With Wanda acting as the anchor point for all three of them, he had the energy and attention to spare on the next part of the plan - collecting together the energy of as many magic users they'd been able to track down and convince. It had been surprising, how forthcoming they had been, but he suspected that it was mostly out of self-preservation. With this presence co-opting the former vessel of Cyttorak, it would only be a matter of time before it adapted itself to the magic still residing in Marko and sought out more.
Reaching out a trembling hand, he hit the 'call' button on the conference call set up that had been arranged around the circle, speakers at three points of a triangle overlaying it.
"You have joined the conference," a woman's voice told him cheerily, and he winced. Technology. The voice informed him three more times that 'participant has joined the conference', and he resisted the urge to smash the infernal thing.
There was a slight snort from Wanda, though she didn't bother opening her eyes to look at him. Most of her attention couldn't be diverted from the mental weaving but she was aware enough of what was going on around her. "I always did hate that thing," she murmured, fingers twitching slightly in silent pantomime.
"Magic goes corporate," he replied softly, his answering smile more of a grimace. Too much of his personal energies were already being expended, keeping the way open. "I hope everyone's sitting comfortably," he said, raising his voice so the other three magic users, leaders in their fashion of communities in three central points, could hear. "Is everyone ready?"
Assent in three different accents of English. "Very well, let us begin." He reached forward, and picked up the central console of the phone as it sat beneath the portal. "Wanda, I apologize in advance - this could get a bit... messy."
She just sighed, sounding very put upon. "You break it, you buy it," Wanda told him as sternly as she could. Mentally, she strengthened her grip on the strings, pulling them through more and more complicated arrangements. Her mental self was nearly covered in the three colors and it was exactly what she was aiming for. It might just be a mental exercise to her but it was strengthening the connection between the four with every second.
"Well, you did say you hated this thing," he replied, with a slight eyebrow quirk, before placing the console in Wanda's lap and then laying his hand on it. "Don't try to hold onto the energy - it's tagged for Amanda's chanelling spell and it'll only weaken you. Focus on the three of us as people instead," he advised, before closing his eyes again. "On the count of three, ladies and gentlemen," he instructed. "One. Two. Three..."
As soon as the word ‘three’ faded, a golden light exploded from the conference phone, pulsating out of every opening it could find, bringing with it an almost uncomfortable warmth in her lap. Wanda sucked in a deep breath, the light burning strange images into her retinas, and struggled from there to simply ignore it. The imagined strings in her mind echoed in answer, the tempered brown one glistening to almost copper in response. The power was unfamiliar to her so Wanda concentrated on drawing only the familiar to herself. Amanda’s laugh in the office, the look on Illyana’s face in Africa, the feel of an arm across her waist as she slept; drawn together in a cat’s cradle between her mental hands and stretched taut.
Beyond that, everything else faded into the background.
***
He was flying.
Ecstasy filled him, his heart overflowing with joy. He could feel the vibrations of the very world running through him in tiny tremors, the Vale of Tears giving way to the brilliant light that seemed ti suffuse his every molecule.
So that's what it felt like touching the Divine, he thought absently, and reached out.
***
Energy illuminated everything, pouring into Amanda; the entire place went red-hot. Illyana could feel the difference: It was written in the subtle shift of everything around them, like Ikea furniture suddenly locking into place, something she understood without words. Yet -
Was Amanda supposed to have that much magic at one time? Was it safe?
Amanda wouldn't have been entirely sure it was safe if Illyana had voiced the concern. Then again, when had what they did ever been? Her back burned suddenly, the jolt locking her into place with a jerk. Smoke wisped up from her jacket - or the representation of her jacket, the same one Candra had destroyed - and she gritted her teeth at the pressure building in her head. "This better not give me any more brain damage, or Moira and Dr. Curt're gunna be pissed off," she grated.
"Oh, for God's sake," Illyana breathed, feeling something pull, like she was - what? She watched Amanda, apprehension mounting with every breath and every curl of smoke, until finally she felt as though she couldn't take it anymore; and at that moment, without meaning to, she moved, hand darting out, and she pulled, wrenching it out of Amanda's chest, using all the strength she had, completely unaware of the other girl. It - the Soulsword. And with equal certainty, she knew what to do next, so she lifted the sword above her head, and, swinging down, plunged it into the Astral Plane, striking for the heart.
Amanda cried out at the wrenching sensation, feeling the power pouring into her suddenly diverted out again. 'Where the fuck did that come from?' she thought briefly, only remaining on her feet because the power had locked her in place. As the Soulsword hit the 'ground' however, it was like a nova had gone off behind Amanda's eyes, energy exploding out across the plane, forcing a kind of order on the increasing chaos.
She shuddered but held it, directing that terrible flow, feeding it recklessly into the Archetypes of Magic...
And the Shaman smiled, the wise old face crinkling in delight as he stood over the prone form of the Scientist.
The Soldier grunted in surprise, the Warrior's sword sliding into him with a wet, final sound.
The Trickster laughed, and the anti-Hero screamed...
***
He was drowning. The pain wracking his very Self.
His mortal body, the vessel of flesh and sin could not feel it, he has left it behind, so far behind, but his mind, his spirit buckled under the intense pressure of...
What?
The words escaped him. There was no description for the immensity of it, the majesty and the glory. He could feel the connection, the echoes of the entire world seemed to reverberate endlessly through him. No longer the gentle vibrations, but the great, shuddering tremors full of meaning, full of knowledge, full of hopes, full of secrets and prayers and wishes and fears and dreams!
Too much.
His mind was too small, too limited. Too human.
The agony receded suddenly, quited into a dull, throbbing ache and he swallowed convulsively, suddenly realizing that he had a body again, of sorts. That there was ground under his feet.
Cracked and bleeding the desolation stretched into eternity. It was beutiful, even in its terrible, bleak wrongness.
He the pain coming off of it in waves, buffeting him, tugging at him, begging.
Begging him for help.
Him.
Things get messy.
The circle was an island of calm in a swirling vortex of chaos - papers, books, styrofoam coffee cups, plastic stirrers, jackets a pizza box... whatever wasn't fixed down and light enough to be caught up in the backlash of the energy pouring from the phone console flapped around the room in an wild dance. The lights flickered madly on and off, adding to the scene, and a low sound, not quite a moan, escaped from Strange. By the light of the energy siphoning up into the portal, his face looked ashen.
In the circle itself, Wanda's face was slack, almost as if she were sleeping but it was obvious by the movement of her eyes under their lids that she wasn't. There was no physical pain for her but more of a mental weariness – the others were using her to ground themselves, drawing on their reserves and hers. A deep breath and she recaptured an end of a string that tried to slip away. Unacceptable. She wound it tighter around her wrist, settling it back on her skin with a sharp tug of defiance.
Under Strange's hand, the conference phone was growing increasingly warm with a smell of overheated electronics and ozone. "We need more," he grated - and somehow, despite the unorthodox use the phone was being put to, there were answering responses from the speakers, voices tight and strained. The energy hitched, pulsed, then increased, pouring up into a portal that was noticeably smaller than it had been originally.
Wanda frowned. The others were losing ground, she realized, either unable to ground themselves or experiencing problems with their foundations. And without their help, they were done for. Concentrating heavily, she carefully stripped her left arm of the strings and looped them over her right. She shuddered slightly at the shift but forced her eyes open as she slid her hand on top of Stephen's, on top of the conference phone. With a steady cadence she said her name – her full Name, hoping to catch everyone's attention.
"I need their Names," she said softly. These were strangers to her and she doubted she would be of any good – unless they had a connection. And according to her research, the sharing of Names just might be able to achieve that.
There was a pause, and then first one disembodied voice, then another, speaking so faintly it was barely audible. Names whispered one by one, until it came back to Strange. Looking into her eyes, he leaned forward, and murmured into her ear, ending it with the briefest touch of lips to her hair. "So brave." His voice was growing thready. "Careful."
Wanda's lips quirked slightly into a brief, warm smile before her features went blank again. Back in her mind once more, she checked to make sure the three strings were still secure – there was no sense in trying this only to lose them that way. And then, one by one, she Named them, imagining the words ringing off the walls in an echo that grew with every second. Even though it was internally, they were waiting for the ripple of power that the naming invoked and reacted accordingly.
For each name, she tried to envision the string – but it was different now. Bound only by that knowledge, what appeared instead were three long strands of barbed wire, the silver color dulled to a gun metal gray. Gritting her teeth, Wanda reached for them, twisting them around her left arm (closest to the heart, the focal point of her life energy) and with no time for hesitation, yanked the ends closed around each other. They bit into her arm and while she knew there was no physical pain, she still couldn't stop the chuff of noise escaping from her lips as she grounded all them to her.
The energy pulsed again, then flared into new brilliance. Grounded by Wanda, the three unseen magic users were able to pull further on their people, extending the net of donation. The phone console started to smoke slightly, the heat of it searing Strange's hand. The winds picked up, carrying with them the babble of a dozen languages and scents from across the world: dust from a distant African plain, jazz music from New Orleans, frying sesame oil and soy from a food stall in China, the tang of engine exhaust and pigeons from London... Strange cried out as the spell came to a crescendo, a palpable wave of heat and light exploding upwards into the portal.
It was like a vacuum had occurred. The pieces of conference room that had been spinning around dropped to the ground; a blanket of silence covered everything; and where there was light, now there was only dark. Wanda struggled to capture her breath, hissing slightly as the hold from the unexpected three tightened slightly. She was about to ask if it had worked when the representations of the people pulling on her suddenly were all pulled tight, almost to the breaking point.
She closed her 'hands' on them, the barbed wire biting more and the strings wrapping tighter and tighter around her right wrist, as she gasped, "Stephen!", in warning.
Above them the portal flexed, bulging outwards and then reversing, sucking up towards the ceiling. And then it gaped wide. There was a brief moment in which both of them had time to look in horror upwards, and then the portal belched forth... chaos. Psionic energy, mixed with magical, writhing and twisting in torment, poured down upon them.
***
The plan had worked.
The Astral Plane bent by the sheer mass of the sudden onslaught of the magic users, bowed to the brutal force.
It has been desperately looking for an outlet, for a vehicle that would allow it to strike back against the threat it felt within itself.
But without the telepaths to define it and give it form, the terrible potential of the Undermind remained impotent, staggering blindly and helplessly in search of its target.
Until the mages came.
The massive energy produced by the humanity's collective Dream buckled, shuddered and finally gave way.
Like a dammed, redirected river it flowed reluctantly into the new channel. The form of it changing, the archetypes casting back toward the dim, forgotten past. To the Age before science. When spells not atoms defined the world, when the spirits mocked Man from every brook and under every bush, when fearful and uncertain the Humanity huddled around the fire, warding away the darkness of the unknown.
The Astral Plane calmed, slowly and reluctantly, like a skittish colt, the storms wracking it subsiding and revealing something new in their wake.
The universe defined for so long by the mind of humanity born of the Industrial Revolution and the Science's triumph suddenly gave way to the realm seen through the eyes of mages, whose energy poured into the vacuum left by the telepaths defined and twisted the Astral Plane, rejecting the bound placed on them for centuring and subconsciously as much as purposefully painting across the suddenly available canvas their own Dream.
Consensus changed, the markers and symbols transforming, as the mages brought back that which defined their life, which gave their magic focus, the vessels through which they controlled and understood the world
The Sun disappeared, the burning mass of hydrogen giving way as Ra raised his staff and smiled in grim approval.
The Moon's chariot sped over the horizon, the booming laugh of its driver carrying on the wind, that was the breath of a trapped God, and was echoed by the howl of Wild Hunt's hounds. The Sky titled suddenly as Atlas shrugged, lowering one arm to scratch his nose, shooing away Fenris. The loa giggled, while the winged serpent slithered across the edge of the Humanity's understanding.
The new, yet old, balance held. The rules changing in mid blink, the old answers finding no questions, the old laws trapping the unwary in the prison of their own misconception.
Except of course there was but one telepath still remaining on the plane. All others have been driven from it by the raging cataclysm, expet for the Shadow King. Standing in the midst of the fury, in the eye of the hurricane the entity survived unscathed, able to focus on its quest.
But from this there was no defense.
From this there was no escape.
The sadden calm caught it by surprise and then, without warning the Astral Plane, the world it has made its own for decade stopped making sense.
The entity's scream echoed across the Plane and then was suddenly cut off as it was ruthlessly cast out by the dimension that no longer understood it.
And with it went the paradoxical keystone of the new balance. For without the threat of the emergent hybrid, without the growing malignant force born of Cain Marko's body and Amahl Farouk's disease, the mages' force alone was not enough to maintain the new Consensus.
The storms, chained so securely just moments ago, broke free again, their fury seemingly stronger tenfold as the Undermind raged against the mages.
Mages who suddenly found themselves trapped, unable to disconnect. Their very presence fueling the the feedback loop of the two incompatible Paradigms battling each other, two immense forces clashing, their impact too vast for the Astral Plane to absorb.
***
The world was collapsing.
Or that's what it seemed like. It was crumbling, pieces literally coming free, the ground disintegrating beneath their feet - Illyana could hardly feel which direction went home, the connection there stretched so tight that it could hardly be discerned. "How the hell do we get out of here?" she shouted, raising her voice above the howling wind and high, keening sound of bending matter breaking and rebreaking.
"Follow the thread!" Amanda screamed back above the groaning of structures twisting inside out. She indicated the fine line of coppery brown leading from her wrist to... elsewhere. It had thinned down to a barely visible line. "Wanda's anchor!"
She almost lost it: She was almost taken by the Astral Plane, eaten alive. She could feel it in every screaming nerve, every uneven breath, closer and closer, but -- there. That was it. She just had to follow it -- don't let it go again, idiot -- and it would take them home.
Seeing Illyana stumble, nearly lost, Amanda paused in her own painfully slow inching back towards the source of the thread. She stretched her hand out behind her for Illyana to take. "C'mon!" she called. "We'll make it easier for Wanda to pull us back if we're together!"
Shit. Illyana knew that she had to take Amanda's hand, but she still hesitated, long enough that it mattered, and she had to reach out anyway, grasping Amanda's hand with her rough, callused palms. Almost defiantly, she made no comment on the deformed fingers, any more than she had on her dead-looking skin. And they made their way closer to home like that.
'C'mon Boss Lady, bring us home.' The thought was as much of a prayer as anything.
Amanda and Illyana get free, leaving chaos behind them. But all is not lost.
Between one moment and another, the extra passengers suddenly were no longer there, cut off by the feedback loop from the Astral Plane. Wanda grimaced, feeling the strain from just her original three. Whatever was going on, it was big and they were all going to be caught up in it if something didn't happen. Fast.
"Enough," Wanda gasped, a red light exploding from her hands, "is enough."
It wouldn't have worked if they hadn't been using her life force to stabilize six people at one point. It shouldn't have worked but chaos ability was known for bending the obvious if it was inconvenient. And, perhaps unknown to the entity they were fighting, it gave Wanda the added benefit of screwing with psionics. It snapped down the lines that connected her to Illyana, Amanda and Stephen, a red thread intersecting all three of their strings like an open vein.
Stephen groaned and pushed himself upright from where he'd been knocked flat by the burst of energy from the astral plane. Blood was trickling freely from his nose and ears, and his complexion had gone grey - in that moment, he looked like an old, old man. The astral plane was in agony, lashing out against the artificial order they'd forced upon it - Stephen felt as though his mind was turning inside-out. "Wanda..." he grated. "Let me go, focus on them. I can hold the portal."
Shuddering, she did as he asked and the pressure eased up slightly. Now, holding one string in each hand, powers on full and flooding the connection that the women were using to stay in the Astral Plane. Right as the lines were about to snap, Wanda mentally hauled backwards, using the connection in an attempt to break them away from the seething mess.
The portal flexed again, and a hand appeared, flailing wildly. Another tug from Wanda and there was a shoulder and the top of a blonde head. One more and Amanda - nose bleeding, eyes wild - appeared. She struggled out of the portal, falling onto the floor with a groan and then sat up, rubbing at the blood drying under her nose. "I don't think it worked," she croaked, painfully aware of how obvious that was.
"What happened?" Wanda demanded, mentally taking one step away from the meditative state, releasing her mental exercise on Amanda's 'string'.
Amanda shook her head. "'Yana first," she said. "Everything's gone to hell in there."
Only through years of practice was Wanda able to refocus her breathing - between knowing things were going pear shaped and the burn feeling radiating from the conference phone, it was difficult. With only one person latched onto her using the spell, though, it made her concentration a bit better and she focused on reeling Illyana's essence back towards her own. Back towards home.
The portal shrank slightly, and alarmed, Amanda glanced at Strange. His face was chalky white, and with the residual magic in her system, she could see how low his energies were. Shuffling over, she lay her hands over his, lending him what she had left. "Keep hold just a little more, Doc," she told him.
Illyana stumbled through the portal, sheet-white and shaking with effort, as though she'd made a final push. Behind her, the portal snapped closed, Strange collapsing unconscious. She leaned against the table, catching her breath, catching Wanda's eyes in a silent thank you before looking away. "Well," she said, after a moment, "that was even more of a disaster than normal."
***
He didn't stumble onto the Astral Plane as many people did, by accident -most in their dreams; a few semi-consciously searching for the everlasting Question or Nirvana.
Fewer yet were able to process the experience, to catalogue it. Most lacked either the training or the experience that would have given them the tools necessary to understand, to come to terms what he was dealing with.
Madness waited for some. Other locked the experience away, hiding rather than being trapped by the immensity of it.
But the wounded, battered Undermind - its defenses torn to shreds, the horror of the hybrid yet unborn, the pressure of the magical energy wrenching it into alien, unfamiliar, unacceptable form - reached out for him. Disdaining mages and abandoned by psies it locked onto Bennet du Paris.
A man.
Not a psi.
Not a mage.
Just a man in search of the Truth.
A mind dedicated to the search for the Greater Harmony. A clean and ordered, uncluttered life of meditation and discourse.A monk, divorced from life and its temptations, seeking peace in prayer, reaching out for the undefinable, searching for the perpetually hidden. He groped toward the edges of the Dream, until it suddenly reached back, the Undermind flaring and manifesting through him.
He stood alone, bewildered and terrified. His astral from pushed and pulled by the great forces roiling the Astral Plane.
The scathing desert wind flayed him, and he drowned within the enraged monsoon.
He wept, uncomprehending but aware of the pain surrounding him. Not his own. But the world's.
The sick wrongness of it all beat at him, pulsating deep within his mind. The Astral Plane, the undermind, psionics, collective subconscious - none of those terms would have meant anything to du Paris were he to hear them.
The world went mad around him, beating at him, howling in misery, its agony sweeping through him, driving him to his knees.
He wept, his lips moving soundlessly through the intimately familiar words, the litany of Ave Maria flowing easily and freely as his mind reached out for that peculiar quietness, for the secret center of itself and the idyllic peace that the prayer and meditation brought to him.
He was not the One. He could not do what it wanted. He wasn't worthy!
The tears blurred his vision and for a brief second he thought he saw Her.
She had his mother's face.
Strange... he always imagined her younger, not greying hair, a face aged by worry lines and kindly eyes.
The Latin halted and he sobbed, reaching out for her. "Mere... I can't. It's not me they want!"
The infinitely familiar smile, the lips quirking even after an exhaustion of the day's toil. Like always she reached out for him, the coolness of her fingers feeling like balm on his cheek.
"Of course it is."
He blinked. The image disappearing as he knew it would, and yet the feeling of her hand upon his face lingering...
He flinched. The wrongness surrounded him, the pain of the world unbearable.
He smiled.
And suddenly it was the simplest thing in the world to reach within himself for that awesome power coiled there and let it out.
Painting a pattern that wanted to be drawn.
