DREAMINGS TO DIADEMS: THE REDEEMING REVERIES OF MADELYNE PRYOR

By Quillon42

SOMETIME IN 1988 IN THE OUTBACK

Glinting at Lady Madelyne from across the trove was the token she sought so fervently to take. This fair, rosy Queen, newly assumed into an army of demon-driven odium, she had the medallion in her mind's eye even before she was seduced into perdition by that mulberry-fleshed monster S'ym. Miss Pryor's corruption only caused her to covet the trinket all the more, and by the recent sullying of her very soul, she would have it.

Madelyne grinned as she gathered the gold into her palms, her face for a weighty moment receding into that Silvestrian shadow with only eyes and smile showing. Reflecting back at her from the auric were those same distorted, demented features shown to her in the gleam of that damask demon's fingernail, the creature offering her power, the chance to hurt her husband back for his abandonment of their Alaskan abode.

"It's…it's very fitting…for me," she remarked to herself, intending the participle in both the sense that the bauble cinched together quite well her scant azure tatters, yet also clinched the queenliness she was seeking to radiate through the treasure's regal luster. All around her, the other precious keepsakes now seemed to shine with less of a sheen, as if resigning themselves to a silent envy.

Honestly Madelyne was mostly steeped in hallowed humility, for the few years of her existence that were actually lived out and not the mimickings of the memories of another person altogether. As long as she had her man, and the boy they had together…those comprised all the treasures in the world in her eyes.

Really it was not until she lost that spouse Scott, and then that child Nathan Christopher, that Madelyne had given up on attaching herself to others. The only things, to her, that were worth keeping thereafter were things in fact, objects, inanimate entities to which she could build a bond and which would never betray her. Hence the up and coming Queen's latent love for and consummate savvy in computers.

It was during her personal computer inventorying and her psychometric scanning of all these subterranean treasures, in truth, that she discovered the brooch that beckoned to her. The chance encounter with the small auric cluster came about when she was an affable acquaintance helping out those Uncanny heroes, those X-Individuals who were reported dead to the world through what was back at this juncture the most advanced of communicatory channels: television broadcasts during the Adversary-fueled Fall, an event that transpired only months before the time of this tale. When the Xers reemerged from the Otherworld unto the Outback, one of their first little forays there involved this discovery of agglomerations of gold, silver, and similar inestimable minerals, all shaped into lovely cameos and keepsakes and such.

Originally not Madelyne, but rather that kismet-kissed fop by the name of Longshot, had happened upon this entire underground hoard. Really he fell upon it by accident, just another dumb-luck discovery by the amicable sapien-seeming alien. Relishing in the holiday spirit that reigned at the time, the mirthful mutants eschewed greed and embraced instead giving, listening to the ghosts that inhabited the heaps of fortune and figuring ways to return the treasures, gathered from six continents by the rascally Reavers, to their original owners.

Although Madelyne, this woman who would be a most quaking Queen, had located the proper former possessor of the medallion that moved her so…she concealed this particular finding from her friends. There was just something about the bauble, something that appealed to her even before her demonic downturn; there was something about it that designated as dross all else that glittered down there, something about its shining sheen and its perfect circularity. Something that made it indeed an Evil Eye of Agamotto, but millions of times more mystical, to Madelyne.

She looked now out to the rest of the brilliant bounty in the chamber. For some reason, none of the other items of gold and silver possessed that same appeal. Save for the medallion, those wonders all seemed to come from a time and a situation to which she could not relate. It was just the trinket itself that she held in her hands now that she could connect with, make part of herself, who she was to become very imminently.

Massaging that medal, then using the same palm to press at the space on her chest where it would rest—that same space where that orchid orc S'ym abruptly grabbed her, after she made her fateful decision in her dream—Madelyne decided to stroll to the other side of the trove, practice the swagger she would show off with her new, corrupt cerulean costume she was wearing now.

As she sashayed along, the slight girdle straining across her mostly-bared hips, the scrap of cape trailing in the musty air behind her…the lady felt the guileless self she knew for so long, felt it all dissipating away. It appeared as if gone now and forever would be the role she might have known and fulfilled as a friend, as a lover, as a mother. Circumstance took much of this away from her, through her husband's abandonment and all that followed. Madelyne nonetheless still made the choice to turn totally to the darkness, though—even if she committed herself while asleep, as she pledged herself to a campaign of perdition through a corrupting subconscious whimsy.

When the lady reached the opposite wall of the chamber, she leaned back, reveling in all she had become. No one would deny her agency anymore; she would have control over herself, not fall victim to horrible things out in the world, all those harmful phenomena from mutant wedlock to Marauder's weapons.

Sure, there was a sort of cozy clan, in the Uncanny ones…Longshot was plucky, and funny; Ororo, she almost felt like she could be a sister, maybe—although Mads knew that she would never share a mutant-to-mutant sororal connection with her as that henna-haired homewrecker whom she hated so thoroughly. Alex…Alex was pleasant. Tender. Nothing at all like his blockhead bastard of a brother. Maddy had to admit a bit that despite the falling out she had with Scott, his younger bro kind of wreaked a tiny bit of havoc, or Havok as it were, upon her own heart…

…No matter, she resolved as she curled the bottom of the semblance of her cloak around her forefingers. If family could quit her, then she could quit family in turn. Madelyne had a greater destiny ahead of her than to be some sort of gene-talent tagalong. As it would be ordained, even if by demons, she would definitively elevate her existence, become the Queen now…

[FSSSHHHHHMMMMMPPPPP]

…And then the lady tumbled, she in all her magnificent malevolent effects, through the secret cavern opening that suddenly yawned ajar to subsume her.

Madelyne shifted her head anxiously to the left, nervously to the right as she struggled to regain her bearings. Another second and the lady picked herself up off the dusty ground to survey what surrounded her.

Everything seemed so much more ethereal here, in this new room of the rough-and-tumble subterra that Her Majesty was stumbling through all on her own, whether by will or the whim of something beyond her. Things in here were darker, and as such the woman squinted, placed a flattened palm over her brow an in effort to divine the objects occupying this new hollow.

All around were items of a luster much more obscure in hue. There was no auric or argent…

For the entire populace of possessions here, beyond the abrupt alcove which opened up unto Madelyne…each of the components here was instead bathed in beauteous bronze.

While her eyes continued to adjust, the not-quite-Queen took up the object closest to her and scanned it. A figure-eight with a narrow head atop it…materializing as a burnished viola before the vixen's very eyes. The lady caught sight of another bagatelle…no, something bulkier than such a trifling trinket, she noticed, as she came closer. Bringing it up into her now-blood-fingernailed hands, she saw it for what it was: an ancient unit of armor, a proud breastplate, again done up in bronze.

The former flung-away item conjured an image of Alison in Maddy's mind, the instrument's presence producing once more the lazy lullabies Miss Blaire used to utter idly while endeavoring to lay herself down to sleep. The latter made the Majesty consider Elisabeth in her more recent, lavender mail, standing with the most determined poise…standing in her fuller suit, with its cape, so much fuller and intact than Madelyne's own…

Maybe these ladies, in time, could have been sisters to the demon regent that Miss Pryor was primed to become. Could have been kin to beat the odds, just as, again, the Weather Witch and that…infinitely more awful, other X-Redhead of yore were…

It was a delightful distraction, Mads decided now, a pleasant procrastination to continue to survey the constituents in chestnut that adorned the room. A jeweled alpenstock—a walking stick of sorts, much more lavish but at its core and for its function not very far removed from the cane that that aborigine at the abode's limits used on occasion.

A diadem…a headpiece with three fringes…they forming a semicircle horizon to be worn above the head. Just as was worn by the brash young man whom Madelyne could tell was all about her, even though he'd sworn to protect her in a seeming platonic sense…

…given that he was the sibling of her spouse, after all.

She held this last close to her chest, close to the quasi-exposed bosoms consumed from above by the dreary drapery of her navy blue raiment…close to the gleaming golden medallion that now rested between her breasts.

She hunched down, allowing herself a moment, permitting herself to sigh soulfully, take it all in, consider the consanguinity she was going to leave behind in her new life. As she breathed, deeper and deeper with each passing instant, Madelyne found that she was becoming farther and farther away from awake, drifting into oblivion on this floor, as she did so much more violently in the computer area upstairs…so much more tranquilly here.

In the dream—or rather, more toward the aborigine dreaming she experienced this time—there was standing before her the bearer of each of the bronze treasures that the tentative Queen-to-be beheld in the last chamber. Neither Alison nor Elisabeth, nor Gateway nor Havok, none of them said anything to her.

They only stood in front of Madelyne now, in front of the fork they felt she should have taken, during that last trance she had…the one that led back to town, and not to perdition.

Three of the figures then stepped off the path, but still minded Miss Pryor as they proceeded. Only Alex remained.

This much more substantial Summers, more of a man than Scott could ever sham to be, he still said nothing, but only held his hand out to the lady. The palm outstretched was a pleading gesture, but a calm one, a reassuring one.

Gazing into the man's eyes with a serenity of her own, Madelyne reached for Alex's fingers with one hand…

…held up her other hand a second later. Flashed her second hand to her chest, ripped the golden gewgaw from the ruins of her goblin raiment.

Noted fleetingly that the basely-grinning Goblin Queen face was reflecting back in the trinket, and without one mite of hesitation threw the thing as far into the distance of the surrounding desert as she possibly could.

She came to hours later, after another stint of rest that was mercifully dreamless.

Madelyne looked around, glanced at the bronze creations that yet bordered her. Works of art and otherwise that were so much less threatening, so much more temperate and tame, in a good way. The turbulence that roiled within the redhead had subsided, and she found herself relaxed for the first time in as long as her adulthood would allow her to recall.

When she allowed herself the placidity of breathing more paced-out and plenteous than the panting, grasping gasps she gave off in these chambers heretofore, Maddy found that she could perceive things much more lucidly now.

She understood, to boot, that the bronze bits surrounding her were decent denizens; however, there was a more exhilarating existence out there than with such objects, and certainly one more fulfilling than with the enemies with whom she was to ally herself.

Now having quenched the Queen screaming inside of her, Madelyne radiated a grin, an ingenuous smirk that gave off no hint of Modern Age evils, but rather the innocent peacefulness of the time that came before. In truth she would not be able to wait till her friends—her family—returned to Denver, so she could rejoin them all, play a strong, significant part with the team once more. Hopefully recover, with Alex by her side, tenderer parts of her which had been momentarily in remission, due to the nuisance of netherworld meddling.

Of course, Maddy understood as she gathered herself up at last, the woman a glint of brilliance in this cavernous gloom, that there was still the corruptive danger of the Darker Era at large, looming ahead. But she, in this rendition of herself, would never again let anything from that latest Age snuff or tarnish the luster of the light within.

AFTERWORD

People who write stories aren't really supposed to tip their hands and show what was up their sleeves regarding what was going on in their minds when they were composing stories…but the meaning of my little vignette here might be lost on some people, so I'll explain.

There have been different ages of comics over the decades: the Golden Age lasted from the late Thirties to the early Fifties or so, and featured many square-jawed heroes who were pretty two dimensional; the Silver Age graced the period from the Mid-Fifties to about 1970, and began to feature shyer, less certain heroes, from Peter Parker to Scott Summers; and the Bronze Age, which ran from about 1970 to 1985 or so, started featuring antiheroes like the Punisher and everyone's favorite adamantium-laced ignoramus—but it still had a certain innocence to it—and Madelyne Pryor had her first appearance, incidentally, at the tail end of this period in 1983. Also incidentally, her character was very sweet and innocent while she was posing as basically a stand-in for the deceased Jean Grey…then she fell from grace around 1988 or so, when she was corrupted not only by demons but, on a larger scale, by the misery of the Modern Age of Comics itself, which has been said to run from 1985 to the present day. This last of times, as we all well know, has been characterized by a grittier, far more "realistic" sort of characters, with no limits to the manner or morality of any of the players involved in various given series.

All the gold and silver in the treasure trove are supposed to represent those older ages which Maddy never knew, and could not touch; the bronze, in turn, is that part of herself which she lost in the transition from Bronze to Modern. As I have said in other stories such as my Borealis entry, I am NOT seeking to weaken Madelyne here, by taking away her Goblin Power; contrarily, in fact, I am trying to strengthen her, by having her beat that which would have killed her in a matter of mere issues to come. Not to grasp at straws or anything, but who knows…maybe Madelyne could tap into more positive powers, as she had when she was Anodyne, down the road from this ending. Perhaps I'll even do a sequel to this story to that effect/end. As with my other Mads tales here, in any case, I do all I can to save her character—in terms of both meanings of persona as well as virtue—from a terrible fate that she never deserved.

(The title of this story, by the way, alludes to the power of "dreamings" as aborigines imagine and believe in their culture—and phonetically the title also calls to mind the old Atari game "Demons to Diamonds," though the latter reference here is totally random and such here).