The Xavier Institute Neo

Issue 11

"Secret of the Gems"


The moment that Piotr put his hand on the Professor's shoulder, he began to feel something hot in one of his pockets, and it was heating up like an oven. Everyone nearby felt the heat, as Piotr transformed into his metallic body, but the heat was becoming intense enough that he could feel it, even through the strong metal protection that he'd trained so hard to develop. Quickly, Piotr dug the source of the problem from his pockets; the red gemstones; all five of them shining brightly, and radiating intense heat, to almost the point of being on fire. At any moment, Piotr realized, they would burst into flames, and he wasn't the only one there who realized that.

It only took Logan a second to rush to the window and shove it open, and he didn't even need to give Piotr a gesture to indicate what he wanted from the teenage Russian. Piotr didn't like the idea of losing his only clue as to the location of his sister, but nonetheless, he threw the stones out into the yard, where they landed in a circle, just before the inevitable happened.

All the students and teachers alike watched in horror as fire began to spring forth from the red gemstones, forming into a fiery circle that grew higher and higher. If the gemstones had done such a thing inside the building, it would undoubtedly have been burned to the ground, just like Piotr's home in Russia. In only a moment more, five bright lights shot outwards from the circle of fire, striking walls and trees, and where those lights struck, they left large burn-marks; each one nearly three feet wide.

At last, the fire seemed to die away, and in its place, there was a circle on the lawn that shone in a bright red light. For almost thirty more seconds, nothing happened, but then, the circle had stopped glowing, and things seemed to be more or less back to normal.

"What..." Scott asked as he looked out into the lawn in alarm and terror, "What was that?"

"I do not know," Piotr replied, "but I suspect that it was responsible for what happened to my family."

"I do not feel good about this." Kurt said from nearby, "There is something truly wicked about those stones, Piotr."

Piotr made no attempt to deny that as he and the others headed for the exits. At that point, Professor Xavier quickly closed his eyes and spoke to the other students at the Xavier Institute, saying "Students, may I have your attention? There has been an unusual occurrence recently in the front yard; however it may still pose a danger. I have designated a few individuals to investigate it, and determine if it is a threat or not. Try to remain calm, and away from the site of the incident until we're certain that there is no imminent danger."

Then, the professor opened his mind once again to the X-men, to see for himself what they were seeing out on the front lawn.


Of course, Kurt had been the first to arrive on the scene, and was turning a lighter shade of blue as the others approached. Something about what he'd just seen had been even more unsettling than the flames, and the beams of light, and as the others got closer, they could see it too. The gems were still shining brightly, and they were still arranged in a circle on the ground. In between them, where the ring of fire had been a short time ago, the ground seemed to have been stained red, leaving a circular symbol there, connecting the gems to one another, and inside that circle, there was the shape of a five-pointed star.

Kurt had turned away from the symbol on the ground and was breathing pretty hard as the others approached. When Piotr got within a few inches of the red circle, however, Kurt shouted to him in a stern, confident voice.

"Do not touch it, Piotr! None of you touch it!"

Piotr pulled back in response, but there was a look of indignation and discontent on his face as he did so.

"Why? Have you seen any of this before?"

"The gems I do not recognize." Kurt explained firmly, "I have never seen a pillar of fire, or beams of light of the sort that we have all just witnessed, but I do recognize the symbol on the ground. It is a very ancient symbol, universally recognized as the banner of blasphemy. It is the pentagram; the symbol of Satan as the cross is the symbol of Christ. Do not touch it."

Piotr still felt the temptation most strongly to pursue his sister, no matter where that pursuit took him, but nevertheless, he drew back even further.

"Look at this." Logan said after giving the students a moment to finish their own discussion, "Looks like them light beams left something behind."

Sure enough, the students saw what he was pointing to, and it was definitely the very spot where one of the light beams had struck the side of the mansion. On that wall was a large, charred mark; shaped like some kind of letter in another language. It was a type of lettering that neither Logan nor the students recognized, but when Sheila Ramsey saw it, she looked unsettled.

"What do you suppose it means?" Ororo asked as she floated just a little closer to it.

"It means 'endings.'" Sheila replied, drawing all eyes to her. Not even Xavier or Mccoy had known that.

"Some kinda death symbol?" Logan asked, interested, "Satan wants us all to die?"

"This symbol carries connotations much more negative than death." Sheila replied, shaking her head, "It's Babylonian script; a very early form. The Babylonians held very strong beliefs about the afterlife, so for them, the idea of dying was only a transition from one world into the next. The symbol for endings, however, was very different. It was hardly ever used, because its meaning was so severe. 'Endings' referred to those who offended the gods so badly that the gods swept them off the Earth, as if they had never been. It was considered the worst of all fates; becoming nothing at all. This might well have been the most terrifying of all the symbols used in ancient Babylon."

"There were five light beams." Mccoy said, looking around warily, "If each left behind a symbol, we should locate them all first, before anyone tries to tamper with the circle."

Logan just nodded, and then sniffed the air carefully for the scent of the particular kind of burns they were looking for. In just a moment, that scent had pointed him in four different directions.


Within half an hour, Professor Xavier had six symbols on six pieces of paper lying on his desk, each with a description and translation written underneath it. Not all of them were sketched perfectly in every way, but it had been easy enough for Sheila to recognize them once she'd determined what they were. Each was a symbol for endings or evil, and each hailed from a different culture of the ancient world. In those cultures, each symbol would have been the most terrifying, and had the worst connotations associated with it, even if, in modern America, people no longer attributed simple symbols or words exclusively to evil. Modern man had become flippant about the very concept of true evil, as if unready to admit that it even existed, or that it should be treated with caution. Only the older societies, it seemed, had had that kind of good sense.

"It might just be one of the students playing a trick." Mccoy suggested as the X-men had gathered in Xavier's office again, "Some of them do have the ability to start and control fires."

"How many are up on Babylonian symbols?" Logan asked cynically, "You're givin' em too much credit, Hank."

"What about last night's intruders?" Scott asked, "Could it be something they left behind?"

"I think not." Piotr replied, "The gemstones were found among the ashes of my house and parents, accompanied by the Omega symbol charred into our barn, just as it is now burned into the institute walls. Whatever happened at my house happened here, and I believe the gems are the key to it all."

"If the symbols are not some prank; if they are genuine, and if their source is what I think it is, then we are all in considerable danger for our lives, and our souls as well." Kurt insisted, "I recommend great caution in investigating this."

"Naturally." Xavier replied as he looked over the symbols, listening to the advice of the X-men, "Caution is always good advice, but I know that nothing I say will actually dissuade Piotr from investigating this further. Besides, if there is even a chance that his sister is being held by malevolent forces, whether or not those forces are human, I think that we have an obligation to do what we can to save her."

"Thank you, Professor." Piotr replied, though he still didn't smile.

"This didn't happen on its own." Xavier concluded after thinking about it for a moment, "Piotr, I think that it's important for you to tell us everything that led up to this occurrence."

Piotr paused for a moment to look around the room, as if hoping for some alternative, but it wasn't long before his eyes met the eyes of Ororo, and Piotr remembered what she'd told him. She'd made the decision to trust the X-men, and Piotr had to make the same choice.

Quickly, Piotr told them everything he knew about the gems; where Logan had found them, when the gems had begun glowing, and how it seemed to have been a result of touching certain people while carrying the gemstones. Piotr even mentioned the conclusions he'd previously drawn about what probably "triggered" the gems, and how he'd disproved his conclusions. At last, he finished his descriptions, and Jubilation's jaw seemed to have fallen open. The others looked surprised and somewhat confused, but when Piotr had finished describing what had happened, Xavier just nodded.

"Supposing that you are right, and the gems are reacting to the people that you've touched, there must be a common factor to them all. What... what if these gems are like small machines, performing some function under just the right circumstances? Could they be just doing what they were programmed to do, like a computer? I mean, if they did precisely the same thing both times that they were 'activated...'"

"I see!" Mccoy said with an eager smile, "I see what you're saying, professor. If those red gems aren't really gems... If they're really small computers, and all they do is carry out one function again and again, then the reason why they activated when they did, is that they were receiving something from us that they needed to perform their function. The question then becomes; 'what does every computer need in order to function right?'"

"Don't you just have to plug it in?" Jubilation asked as she continued chewing her gum.

"That's it exactly." Mccoy replied, his smile broadening as he turned to look at Jubilation for a moment, "All computers need power. In fact, all machines that operate independent of input by a living organism rely on power of some kind. Not all machines, though, rely on the same kind of power. Some use kinetic power, some depend on heat energy, others solar power, and at this day in age, as Miss Lee has just reminded us, a great many depend on simple, electrical power. So, it stands to reason that if those gemstones started working because you touched certain people, Piotr, that means that they needed a specific kind of power, and had some means of absorbing it through you. That, it turn, would lead me to believe that the kind of power they run on is found inside some kinds of people, and not others, and that they just needed to absorb enough in order to enable them to perform their function. So far, the list of people you've given me, Piotr, has presented me with a few clues. You mentioned Anna and Ororo, one of the recent invaders, as well as both Professor Xavier and Jean Grey. Since we have almost no information on the men who attacked us last night, let's start by focusing on trying to find some connection between the others."

Piotr simply nodded for a moment in reply, before Mccoy continued.

"Well, three of them are your fellow X-men, and two are psychics. To use their power, they need to establish a firmer connection between mind and will, training their minds to harness their mutant powers in a very different way than other mutants. That might be a possible connection."

"That's not it." Ororo said, "That's not how my powers work, for instance."

Mccoy was silent for a few moments, thinking that over, and it was Bobby who spoke next.

"There's gotta be some connection. I mean, aside from all that mind and will stuff, what else do we know about psychic powers?"

"For quite some time, many major religions linked anyone claiming to be a psychic to sorcerous practices like divination." Kurt suggested, "It would not surprise me to learn that the gems hinge upon energies that have connections to witchcraft; even remote ones."

Ororo's expression froze when she heard Kurt say that.

"I..." she muttered, "I... have never been a witch, however..."

"Ororo?" Piotr asked, "What is it?"

"My... My mother..." Ororo said, looking away from the others, "My mother once told me that my people had a strong magical power inside that we have not used for many generations..."

"Then what about Anna?" Scott asked.

"Well, she did absorb the powers of Thor at one point." Xavier noted, "If he truly was a god of thunder, then it's not hard to see where her magic came from. Supposing that 'magic' by that definition really is the connection, and touching any one of us was sufficient to supply power to one of the gems, then the natural conclusion is that by supplying power to all five, Piotr inadvertently activated these small computers, and caused them to... perform their function, whatever it was."

"That's what's been bugging me too, Chuck." Logan said, still frowning, "We've still got no idea what the jewels really did. They made fire and shot symbols into our walls, but what else? Last time it happened, none of us were close enough to see what else was going on."

"Are you suggesting that we attempt to recreate the occurrence somehow?" Xavier asked.

Xavier had not really asked the question to anyone but Logan, but both Kurt and Piotr replied quickly, with very different results.

"No!" Kurt exclaimed.

"Yes!" Piotr insisted.

Xavier felt some doubt, for a moment, over his own decision to follow the subject through to its logical conclusion, but then, Illyana's fate was something that had to be dealt with, whether it brought his students into conflict with one another or not. In fact, in that instance, he wasn't above taking sides.

"Kurt..." Professor Xavier said, "I... understand your objections to this entire affair. I find it very unsettling myself, but there is a chance that this may be the only way that Piotr will ever learn the truth about what happened to his sister. Would you not take a similar risk if it were your loved one?"

"No, Professor, I would not." Kurt replied sternly, turning to face him, "If Illyana Rasputin is alive and needs us to rescue her from some impending danger after all this time; that would be worth a calculated risk, but I would not risk the safety of my soul for any man. I will stand by the X-men in mortal danger of any sort, but if you decide to activate those gemstones again, you must do so without my assistance."

"What if we discover that we need your help afterwards?" Xavier asked, "What if something that we find in the gems endangers us?"

"On the contrary, I expect you to be endangered by what you find in there." Kurt replied somewhat angrily, "I will stand by your side in defending you from anything that you find within the gems, but I will take no steps to help you to explore them further. As far as I am concerned, they are evil of the basest sort, and a man of good conscience will fight evil for the safety of his friends, but he will not experiment with it, even if his friends choose to."

Xavier nodded. It was a complicated reply, but it was the one he'd expected Kurt to make, and it was, he supposed, the best one he could expect.

"Should I assume" Xavier asked, "that you won't try to stand in our way if we attempt to reactivate the gems?"

"I must advise you not to make that attempt," Kurt said, more sternly than ever, "but now that you have heard my advice... God gives men freedom, and I can do no less."

"Piotr, when you activated the gemstones the first time, were they glowing as they are now?" Xavier asked, but Piotr shook his head.

"No." he replied, "The gems were dull and normal when I first found them. Now that their function is complete, I am surprised that they have not turned dull again."

"There is a chance that they've retained some magic inside them from what you let them absorb before, like a reserve battery." Mccoy suggested, "If that's true, it would explain why they were dull after having sat for years under the wreckage of your house, but not immediately after the lightshow just now. It also means that we only have a certain amount of time to make use of them. After a while, their magic will start to fade, and gathering it again would take a lot of work, and probably put you in a lot of danger."

"We should make use of the gems at once, to help me find my sister." Piotr exclaimed, "If there is power still left in them, only a small amount should be needed. If Jean or the professor touches them now, they may reveal the circle of fire again."

Kurt sighed in disappointment as he listened to the others making those plans, but there wasn't much more to be said. Just after having decided that they would be willing to break the law to protect one another, the X-men had made an even darker choice, and Kurt wasn't sure that he could be one of them as they continued along that path.


Nevertheless, Kurt stood off to one side of the group a few hours later, when the school day had ended, and preparations had been made. They all seemed to think it was just like any other kind of investigation. Some, like Bobby and Jean, did look a little nervous, but on the whole, they didn't seem to understand the gravity of what they were about to attempt. They were just eager to help their friend settle up with the truth about his past.

In fact, Kurt wondered, just then, whether he might not be overreacting, and whether all of his superstitions were really just that. Was Piotr's peace of mind really the important thing, or were they placing everyone they knew in grave danger by what they were doing there on that morning? There was no way to really be sure, and that uncertainty made Kurt nervous and edgy. The whole affair lingered much too close to Hell for his tastes.

On Kurt's side of things, nothing had changed. Some of the students looked nervous, others looked supportive of Piotr's proactive will, but Kurt stood to one side of what they were doing, just as he'd said he would, far enough away from them, he thought, that he wouldn't be seen as responsible for what was about to happen. He even had his sword buckled to his back, clearly expecting the whole group to be walking right into violence of some kind or another. It was a strange reversal of circumstance. So often, Piotr seemed like he was on the outside of the things that the X-men were involved in, and yet, suddenly, he was at the center of it all, and Kurt was left out. It was the only way it could have happened, but it was still strange and ironic.

At last, in that last moment, Kurt's muscles tightened up, as Jean touched one of the gemstones, and quickly drew back. As expected, intense heat was starting to build once more around the gems.

As one, the X-men stood back, with Bobby ready at any moment to throw a wall of ice up around all of them, for all the good it was likely to do. Soon, the whole affair had started all over again. Fire built upwards inside that circle, traveling higher and higher into the heavens, until none of them could even see its top anymore. Then came the lights, rushing forth from the positions of the gems, and forcing the X-men to duck out of the way, to avoid being caught in those scarring lights, and having a symbol of some grim sort burned into their very flesh. At last, the lights faded, the flames died down, and all that was left was the circle, but what they saw in that circle was nothing like the simple red lines they'd seen just moments before.

Piotr and Logan were the first who dared to approach the evil-looking circle and stare into it, and inside that circle, they saw a vast landscape of nightmarish images; red grass with tiny, black slivers sticking out from each blade, walls that seemed designed to look like the faces of suffering people, a sunless world heated only from within, where lava flows and water pools were in opposition to each other, and yet, both were needed just for the survival of the living things that dwelled there. The images were like a very grim nightmare, and it wasn't long before both Piotr and Logan turned back away from them.

Logan, however, hadn't turned away from a weak heart. He'd seen things just as horrifying when he'd been at war, and he'd become somewhat hardened to horrifying sights as a result. He'd turned away to grab a small, gray rock from the ground nearby, and in a moment, he'd thrown it into the images that the group was seeing. Sure enough, the rock fell into the image, to land on the bright red grass, on the other side. The grass seemed to wave towards the rock for a moment when it landed, then returned to its previous position. Logan looked satisfied when he saw that, however.

"Thought so." Logan said aloud, "This ain't just some picture; it's a portal; a doorway. We jump in here and we'll come out on the other side, wherever it is."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Piotr asked, "Illyana..."

"Rein it in, shiny." Logan said, grabbing Piotr by the shoulders for a moment, "We've still got no idea where we'd be headed, or how to get back. Besides, do you think your little sister could still be alive after spending years in a place like that?"

"My sister was the purest of souls." Piotr said, looking Logan directly in the eyes, "No person ever sought so much to see the best in everything and everyone, or to show love to others. In a universe where a loving God governs all, I cannot imagine that she would simply die as a victim of evil. Even Kurt said that..."

"I said that she might have survived, in the best of cases." Kurt interrupted from behind the group as the image on the ground faded and the gems continued to gleam in their places within the red circle, "That does not mean that I think she is still alive. I think it is most likely that we will find Illyana's charred skeleton as soon as we enter that hellish world."

Piotr scowled when Kurt said that, but then replied, "At least then I would know."

"But what would that knowledge cost you?" Kurt asked, "Your life? The lives of your friends? Perhaps even our very souls?"

"You need not join me." Piotr said, trying to speak slowly, just to drive his point home, "As for my own soul, I must know who is responsible for the deaths of my parents, and I must know the fate of my sister. Without that knowledge, I will go mad, and my soul will be lost anyway."

"You have many wonderful opportunities, Kurt, but that pit is the only opportunity that I have to move on and have a future, because it is my only chance to make peace with my past."

Kurt looked suspicious for a moment, but when he spoke again, the edge to his voice had softened.

"Tell me, Piotr. How much did you love your family?"

"No man has ever loved their family as I loved mine!" Piotr exclaimed angrily, "I would have braved any danger for them, and fought any enemy."

"Is it love that drives you now?" Kurt asked, "If it is purely out of love for your sister that you wish to enter this world, then your soul will not be lost, even if you die. I do not fear for the other X-men. If they decide to join you in this quest, they will do so out of love for you, and so their souls will reap no punishments for stepping through the gates of Hell, but I would prefer to be certain that it is love of your family, and not hatred of their killers, or fear of not knowing that truly drives you. Love is the centerpiece of all that is good, and it burns brightly, even in the deepest darkness. Is it love that drives you, Piotr?"

Piotr just nodded once, and Kurt sighed again.

"I have sworn not to stand in the way of all this. I will even agree to join you in this foolish mission, but I would recommend making a few preparations before diving into this. Do not leap into this gateway until there is nothing more that you can do to prepare for it."

Piotr grinned a little, as some of the other X-men ran off to gather a few things, in preparation for the voluntary mission they were going to be taking part in. In the end, only Kurt, Piotr, Bobby, Jean and the teachers remained. Most of the teachers looked very worried, but that was to be expected. It was probably the first time that Jean had ever really felt comfortable talking to Bobby about anything, and for all she knew, it might be the last, so she decided to take advantage of the situation.

"So..." Jean said as she approached Bobby, "I guess we're the only ones staying behind this time."

"Huh?" Bobby asked, confused, "Why would we do that?"

"Well... um..." Jean wasn't sure what to say. She remembered all the brave things that Bobby had done in the past, but she hadn't expected him to join in that particular mission. Jean was so terrified of what she'd seen already that she'd been looking for some kind of excuse to not accompany the others, but as Bobby had basically just told her that he was, in fact, joining the mission, that meant that his hesitation to go and get anything in preparation for the mission signified that, far from being afraid of what he might find on the other side of that gateway, Bobby was confident in his own abilities to the point of arrogance. It made Jean feel worse than ever, and Bobby hadn't even meant to make her feel that way.

Of course the worst part wasn't feeling like a coward herself. The worst part was being afraid of what the others would think of her, if they knew just how scared she was. Jean didn't usually worry about what Bobby thought of her, because he sometimes seemed like a bit of a jerk, but the others... She cared what the others thought. Quickly, she thought up an excuse for staying behind, and tried to deploy it as fast as she could.

"I'm sorry. I thought you'd decided to stay behind just to keep me company."

"Why are you staying here, Jean?" Bobby asked.

"Well, I have to." Jean replied quickly, "I have to be here to keep the gateway open."

Bobby seemed to think about that for a moment, then asked "Couldn't the professor do it?"

Jean's mind raced to find an answer to that question, but she eventually decided upon something simple and pragmatic.

"He'd have to be able to bend down and touch the stones." Jean said, "The professor is in a wheelchair, Bobby. It's not so easy for him to do that."

"Oh. Right." Bobby noted aloud, then after thinking about it for a second or two, he said "Too bad, I guess."

"Huh?" Jean asked, confused by his words, "What do you mean 'too bad?'"

"Well, it's just that we hardly ever go on missions all together as a team." Bobby said, "I'd just kinda hoped that... you know... just this once... considering how nasty things are likely to get..."

Jean took a deep breath, and then let it out through her nose. She felt like striking herself across the face. It was true; they were a team, and they didn't always get to tackle missions as a single unit. Most of the time, they'd each have individual tasks to take care of, and need to split up or implement some complicated strategy in smaller groups, or else they'd been separated from one another by something they couldn't help. Jean knew that, on some level, but her fear had blinded her to the importance of that fact. Bobby, however, had seen it clearly.

The reason that Jean felt like slapping herself was that having gone to such great lengths to come up with a reason why she couldn't join them, and in particular, having assumed that Bobby would be staying behind as well... Jean had supposed, at first, that Bobby was afraid for his life, like her, but... For some reason that Jean couldn't fathom, Bobby didn't seem to have any fears at all; at least no personal ones. He played so many silly pranks, and did so much boasting about how great he was, but if he really had the courage and confidence to never doubt himself, even in the face of Hell, maybe he had a right to boast. Maybe Bobby Drake really was the most uncanny of all the mutants who'd ever lived. Jubilation thought he was an idiot, and Ororo thought that he needed to grow up, but at that point, for the first time, Jean felt intimidated by Bobby. He was like a mountain; unshaken by even the most powerful forces. How could she stand next to someone like that and claim to be worthy to be his friend?

Jean still didn't really like Bobby all that much, and she still didn't find him attractive in any way, but she was starting to realize that the very things that made Bobby seem so silly and immature represented a large gap in her own personal growth. She had a lot that she needed to improve on in the future.

Jean felt pretty lousy about needing to improve so much in something as important as courage and confidence, but what really tore her up inside just them was the realization that as much as she needed to improve, she couldn't do it then. Even though her reason for staying behind had been thrown together in just a few seconds, it was still a valid reason. She really was needed to open the gateway again, and retrieve them when the mission was complete, and just as Bobby had said, it really was too bad. Jean Grey had the power to help them against whatever they were about to face, but the chance to use that experience to earn greater courage for herself was passing her by.

When Jubes, Ororo and Scott returned from gathering the things they thought they'd need in that hellish place, however, Jean felt strong fear rising inside of her again. Maybe, she realized, she'd have the chance to test her courage again anyway. Just the idea of reaching out and touching those gemstones to open that gateway, and maybe send her friends to their deaths was sending chills through her whole body. It was, however, a fear that she needed to face, and she was up to the task. In just a few moments, she'd brushed her left hand against one of the gems.

Just as before, heat built and built, fire sprung up from the ground, and beams of light struck the same five points again, charring them with the same five letters. Then, as the fire died down, the images appeared; images of things and places ideal for causing physical suffering; images of a world where survival was truly Hell; images of the place that Piotr insisted on going. Without a moment's hesitation, Piotr had transformed into his metal body, and leapt forward, descending into the pit before him without even so much as a word. Logan was close behind, followed by Kurt. Xavier closed his eyes as they went, one by one. He didn't like the situation any more than Kurt did, and he wasn't eager to watch his students travel to what might well be their deaths. Still, Scott and Bobby followed closely behind the others, then Jubilation and Ororo, and then the gateway had vanished again, and the X-men had disappeared from their world.


It was, as it turned out, a good thing that Logan and Piotr had been the first to descend into the nightmarish world beyond the gateway, because the bright red grass at their feet reacted to their presence by pointing quickly in their direction, as it had with the rock that Logan had previously tossed into their midst, and then, each blade of grass seemed to open up, and snap at Logan's ankles like a hundred large mosquitoes. It seemed that the grass was uninterested in Piotr, apparently realizing that it couldn't penetrate his metal skin, but if any of the others had touched the grass, they would undoubtedly have been hurt by it.

Thinking quickly, Piotr reached up, and grabbed Jubilation and Scott from the air in his arms. The others, he knew, had their own means of defending themselves.

"Don't touch the grass!" Logan exclaimed, which caused Kurt, Ororo and Bobby to react. Ororo slowed her descent, to stop herself from coming into contact with the red strands. Kurt, meanwhile, had teleported to the ceiling of the chamber they'd found themselves in, adhering to the stone above their heads. Bobby, however, seemed unsure of what to do at first, until he made a quick decision, and large patches of ice started spreading out all over his body. When he slammed against the ground, right in the middle of the red grass, a cloud of crystal-like ice fragments rose into the air, and several of the X-men winced. They all hoped that he was alright.

However, they had nothing to worry about. When Bobby stood upright a few moments later, they could all see that his body was covered almost completely in ice, and that he'd therefore been protected from the attacks of the bloodthirsty grass. What's more, most of the plants that had been underneath him were also covered in a thick frost, and were slowly dying. Too slowly, Jubilation thought.

As Bobby and Logan vacated the location of the red grass, Jubilation aimed her hands downward, and concentrated her X-force in a very specific way, dwelling on speed and rapid motion, at even the smallest level, until she could see it in her head. Then, shaping her X-force into a hundred small globes, Jubilation shot them forth from her hands like firecrackers, and whenever they made contact with the ground around her, there was a burst of flame that consumed large sections of the carnivorous flora. All of the plants had been burned away in seconds after that, leaving behind a mere shelf of stone to stand on.

"Gee, I'm glad I iced up on the way down." Bobby said as he looked at the small, rapidly-vanishing wounds on and around Logan's ankles.

"It's nothin'." Logan replied seconds before the last of the wounds was gone, "We just gotta figure things out, and get back home. Let's stick together as long as we're here. Jean'll probably open the gateway again in a few minutes to check on us, but let's mark this spot just in case."

Swiftly, Logan clenched his right fist, causing razor-sharp metal claws to pop out. Then, in another moment, he'd driven those claws into the ground, with the intention of dragging them through the dirt, to leave a marker of where they'd been, and which direction they'd gone. However, when Logan's claws made contact with the ground, something happened that he hadn't expected. The entire ground underneath him seemed to tremble, and the many face-shapes on the walls, which he'd thought were sculptures, opened their eyes and mouths, and began to scream in agony and alarm.

Logan quickly drew his claws back out of the ground, and sure enough, the ground was definitely made of dirt, just like the kind of dirt found in New York, but the X-men had been noticed by whatever beings inhabited that strange world, and the unearthly wailing continued on, and on, and on, all around them...


Miles away, a single head turned to one side in surprise. No other being in that entire world could have heard the shriek of the suffering faces in the upper quadrants, but if nothing else, Belasco; the ruler of all of limbo knew what the shrieking meant.

Of all the daemons in limbo, Belasco was one of the most human-looking. His skin was only a deep orange, his eyes were solid gold, and he had two small horns protruding from his forehead, just above his eyes, but in every other respect, he looked perfectly human.' He was no larger or smaller than a typical human, and he had the same number of arms, legs, fingers, and even heads as a human. In fact, his resemblance to a human being had led many of his enemies to underestimate him in the past, and that, of course, had caused him a great deal of trouble during his rise to power, because larger, stronger-looking daemons had hardly ever known enough to fear him. It was only more recently that the daemons had come to know his name and face as one that should be feared, and that made Belasco the closest thing to a real leader that Limbo had.

Of course, to really feel secure in his position of power, Belasco had needed to acquire a few supernatural senses. Sensitive hearing was only one of those. As soon as he realized that someone new had arrived in his domain by the same entryway that had been used last time, Belasco spared a single thought to wonder who it might be, and that thought had left his mind, traveling with the speed that only thoughts can, to the location of the new arrivals. Quickly the thought grazed across their own consciousness, and returned with some basic information about them; names, abilities and especially motivations. However, Belasco found much of the new information very confusing.

Naturally, Belasco had encountered all kinds of beings before, with all kinds of strange names. It was relatively normal to find creatures with names like Piotr, or Logan, or Scott Summers suddenly appearing in his realm; even with abilities beyond those normally attributed to mortals, such as energy projection, rapid healing, and supernatural strength. What puzzled Belasco had more to do with their motivations. One of them; Piotr was the brother of the previous arrival; Illyana Rasputin, but Belasco wasn't sure what that had to do with anything. Apparently, it was the reason they'd come, but he simply couldn't determine why something as trivial as a common parent between two individuals would compel a group of people to leave their home world, and invade enemy territory. It was most confusing. In the end, Belasco decided to chock it up to the fact that humans frequently made silly, immature choices, and not even bother trying to figure them out anymore after that. It was a waste of time and thoughts. Mortals were still mortals, after all, and those "X-men," as they thought of one another, couldn't possibly survive for very long in Limbo. Belasco was quite confident that he didn't need to concern himself with trying to kill them. It was the natural tendency of his people to take care of small issues like that on their own.


The moment the shrieking had started up, both Logan and Kurt had lost nearly all of their focus. Of course, it was hard for the others to concentrate too, but the high-pitched, incessant wailing had been particularly painful for the two of them, given how sensitive their ears were. Kurt had fallen to the floor of the cavern when the shrieking started, and Logan had needed to use every ounce of his discipline to keep from trying to dig into the walls with his claws. At last, the shrieking died down, and the unnatural faces closed their eyes and mouths, to return to their previous expressions, looking for all the world like ordinary human heads, except still protruding from the walls.

Fortunately, as soon as the screaming had started, Scott and Jubilation had jumped down off Piotr's shoulders, so they hadn't gotten hurt when Piotr had moved on impulse to cover his ears a second later. In fact, they'd made similar motions, as had Bobby and Ororo, though Ororo had managed to remain floating in mid-air, through the whole, disruptive cacophony.

At last, when the noise faded completely, Logan muttered, "K. New rule. No digging."

"Professor?" Scott asked aloud, while thinking the word clearly in his mind, "You still with us?"

He received, unfortunately, no reply.

"Professor?" Scott asked again.

"Give it up." Logan advised him, "If the Prof could check on us in here, he would've called us first."

"But Professor Xavier can communicate with anyone on planet Earth." Ororo objected.

"What does that tell you about where we are now?" Kurt asked grimly, scampering back into an upright position, "So far, we have seen man-eating grass, and faces embedded in walls, with only the function, it seems, of crying out in suffering, and we have only been in this one chamber of this place. Does any of this seem earthly?"

"Shaddup and don't panic." Logan muttered, "Give me a minute to think."

"If Illyana was ever here, there is no trace." Piotr said, uncovering his ears, and looking around. The room they were in seemed to basically be a cave with one open tunnel leading into a larger chamber outside.

"I don't like anything about this place." Ororo muttered.

"If they do that again, can I bomb them?" Jubilation asked, examining one of the faces on the walls more carefully.

"I said shaddup!" Logan exclaimed angrily with a slight snarl under his spoken words, that sounded roughly like the growl of a bobcat. The other X-men were flabbergasted. It was rare that Logan took that tone with anyone, and especially with them. Something was really wrong. Even Logan was obviously unsettled. They all decided, then and there, to just listen to what he had to say for a moment.

"Here's what we're gonna do..." Logan said after thinking for a few moments, "Ignore the ground, ignore the faces... Hell, if they start screamin' again, ignore that too. Ignore everything that ain't tryin' to kill us. Just pay attention when I talk to ya, and do what I say. We'll get outta this..."

For a moment, Logan closed both eyes, and when he opened them again, he seemed very sad.

"When you kids first showed up at the Institute," Logan said aloud to them, "Chuck's first words to me were that I shouldn't tell you my views on life. Even after all that's happened, I never really did, but now... considering... It looks like you might have to know."

Most of the students had come to trust Logan over the course of the last several months, but even so, hearing him say those words made them feel very worried. It seemed that Logan was about to teach them something truly terrifying, and they weren't sure what to say to that.

"My mutant powers are pretty hard to work with some of the time." Logan confessed at last, "I got enhanced senses of smell, hearing and night vision. I got claws and unbreakable bones, and I can heal from huge injuries, but there's somethin' else I got that I ain't so proud of. It's the other side of my powers; animal instincts. Part of me wants to think like a wolf, or a lion all the time, and just depend on the law of the jungle; survival of the fittest and all that. It's a simple code, and it makes life simple; either ya win, or ya lose..."

Ororo swallowed when Logan said that, but he wasn't quite finished.

"There's one thing about that law that gets left out of most werewolf movies, though." Logan noted, "Truth is, both wolves and lions tend to travel in packs, to protect each other. Some wolf packs ain't even any bigger than the team we got here, and I can deal with that."

Bobby grinned when Logan said that, although no one else was grinning.

"I've got a mind like everybody else." Logan explained, "I can think for myself, so I can sit on them instincts if I have to, but I've been to war more'n once, and in my experience, nothin' pulls a guy and his team through like good instincts and teamwork. If this place here is as big a danger zone as I think it is, we're gonna need to think like a wolfpack, and that means hittin' hard, and all together when we have to hit, and sticking together and protecting each other's backs when we're under fire. There ain't no room for cowards in war. That's what my instincts tell me."

For several seconds, no one said a thing, but at last, Ororo spoke.

"That's horrible."

"Yeah." Logan replied, "Yeah, it is."

There was another long pause, in which no one spoke, but at last, it was Bobby who spoke up.

"I don't think anybody's gonna jump ship, sir. I mean, we all jumped into that little hole to Hell because we're all in this together, right? For me, nothing's changed. How about you guys?"

No one responded to the question vocally, but Bobby got quite a few nods, and that drew a grin, in turn, from Logan.

"In that case, let's find the little sister and..." Logan paused for a moment as he said that, however, letting the sentence die where it was, because he'd just realized something that hadn't occurred to him before.

"Peter..." Logan said, turning back to face Piotr, even as he flippantly mispronounced his Russian name, "You never said a word about what your sister looked like."

It was the first time in quite a while that Piotr had truly looked ashamed, but he recovered quickly, and offered what information he could.

"When I last saw Illyana, she had short, blond hair, and bright blue eyes, that shone with wonder whenever she looked at me. However, she has been missing for quite some time, and whether she is alive or not, her appearance may have changed in that time."

Logan just nodded, and then turned to look across the cavern to the tunnel out.

"Scent's cold," Logan remarked, "but at least it's obvious which way she went. Lead the way Peter."

Piotr could tell that Logan was starting to dislike him somewhat, and for just a moment, it made a difference to him. So close on the trail of his last family member, Piotr found that his obsession over that trail was fading, and sure enough, his sanity and presence-of-mind were returning to their normal state. The problem was just how easy it had become to notice and worry about how his more recent friends felt about him. In spite of all that his friends had said to the contrary, Piotr could tell that he would be guilty if they died in that cavern. Going there had been imprudent, and it was his fault. What better reason, he thought, could there be for finding Illyana and getting back to their own world?

Increasing his own density to transform his body into a strong, metallic substance, Piotr took the lead, heading down the dark tunnel before him. It twisted and turned, this way and that for quite some distance, leading the group on for what felt like miles before it opened up into a much larger chamber, become a mere ledge on the edge of a cylinder-shaped room.

The room was about a hundred yards across, although the walkways and tunnels along the edges of it were hardly ever more than three yards wide. The center of the room was like an enormous, vertical tunnel, traveling upward into a blue haze, and downward into a dark infinity, and along the walls, periodically, were walkways without railings, and tunnels without lights, which from a distance, looked like ridges in the room's walls. It looked almost like the remnants of some giant beast that had tunneled through the ground long ago, except that it was all clearly intended to be maze-like, which indicated that it had been designed by some intelligent being, whether they were human or not.

"'Ro." Logan muttered. It took Ororo a few seconds to realize that he was talking to her, but when she did realize, she floated closer to his position.

"Listen real careful." Logan warned her, "I want you to head down to the bottom of this pit, and then come back up and whisper to me what you found. Don't try to shout to me, or you might just bring this whole place down on top of us, okay?"

Ororo nodded once, then flipped over in mid-air, and plunged downward into the seemingly-endless pit in the room's center. A few moments later, however, there was a sharp scream from below, and Logan immediately motioned for everyone to get back into the tunnel they'd emerged from. As it turned out, they were just in time, as an enormous wind, like a massive tornado sprung up from the center of the vertical pit, drawing about five hundred dark, evil-looking shapes up into the higher sections of the column-room, just seconds before Ororo shot back upward, out of the pit, and flew directly into the tunnel where Logan and the others were hiding.

"Sorry." she whispered quickly. "I'm very sorry. Sorry."

Logan, however, knew what was coming next, and quickly motioned for Ororo to get back, as all six of his claws popped out. The daemon-like creatures were recovering from the wind gust that Ororo had created, and were spinning around in mid-air; preparing for another attack.

As the daemons dove at the X-men all at once, Logan swatted aside one with his claws, putting deep gashes in its body, as it collided with one of the hard, stone walls. The next daemon bit Logan hard in the shoulder, but he'd felt a lot worse, and it was soon a slimy mess in one of Piotr's large, metal fists. Just a moment later, Scott and Jubilation had found openings, and had started firing from behind the protective bodies of their teammate and teacher. Still, the daemons kept coming at them, squeezing in between the blasts and explosions as best they could, to get at their prey, until Bobby started "icing up" again. It was the term he would later use to describe his ability to form and remove a protective armor made of ice all over his body, and as soon as he brought it up, the other students started to move away from him. No one could be sure what he was going to do next. Quickly, Robert Drake waved his icy hands through the air, and a rain of razor-sharp icicles came down on the daemons from above, skewering several of them, and eventually driving them all back in fear. They seemed to have had enough of a fight for one day.

The X-men didn't move for several seconds after the small, winged daemons left. They'd been just what one expected daemons to be; cruel-looking and vicious, with fangs, horns, and claws all over. None of the X-men felt safe after having been so brutally attacked in that manner.

Still, after taking about thirty seconds to wait for his fresh bites and scrapes to heal themselves, Logan turned to look at Ororo, and asked "See anything down there, Ro?"

"N... Not much." Ororo replied in a scared mutter, "After a while, the pit turns to one side, and slicks up with moisture, like some kind of slide, but those daemons were all over that section."

"Just waiting to prey one anyone who might slip and fall into their nest." Logan noted aloud, "Ten bucks says Illyana either wound up at the bottom of that slide, or inside a bunch of those monsters."

Piotr was just starting to feel a little ill as he looked down into the deep, black pit beneath them, and listened to what Logan had said just a moment before, probably because the older man had never really cared about hurting other people's feelings, almost like a drill sergeant.

"Then you're saying we need to get down there." Kurt replied, looking even more worried.

"Well, yeah, but getting down's not the problem." Logan said, looking over the edge again, "Peter and me could just fall the distance, you can climb walls, and I'm betting Bobby would survive somehow, which just leaves Scott and Jubes to be lowered in by controlled wind funnels. Ro's had a lot of experience with that during these last few danger room sessions. She can handle it, even if we have to go one at a time. The real problem is, how are we gonna get back up here? Kurt, you and me could probably get back up, and Ro could get back up no problem. I'll bet even Bobby could figure something out, but... Ro doesn't have enough experience to fly four people around at once with her winds. We could get stuck down there real easy, or at least lost; either way, it wouldn't make any difference whether we find the kid or not."

"Besides, there's no proof she fell down there anyway." Scott said, but Logan shook his head.

"I'm convinced." he said, "You see that mark on the edge over there?"

Scott took a good look at the mark that Logan had pointed out to him, and sure enough, it looked like some dirt had been dislodged near the edge of the path. One of the sharp-edged rocks sticking out of the wall near the crumbled dirt bore a stain along one side, that looked dark brownish-red, and very, very old. After letting the students study the evidence for a moment, Logan pointed over to the bodies of the daemons that he and Piotr had killed a moment before, and it was quite plain that the dark green slime oozing from their remains was different from human blood.

"I see dried, human blood in the daemon world, right next to a crumbled pathway, and to me that says that the little, curious girl comes through here, looks over the edge, and loses her balance when the path starts to crumble. She cuts herself on a rock on the way down, and falls into the pit with debris all around her. Yeah. She went this way. No question in my mind."

"I am so close to her..." Piotr muttered aloud, "She has been this way..."

After peering over the edge for a few moments himself, Piotr turned to face the other X-men, and came to a decision.

"My friends, I must fall to the bottom of this pit. Neither the fall, nor the daemons that we have just encountered will be able to hurt me, and I cannot leave without knowing what has happened to my sister."

"Hate this." Logan muttered after just a moment, "It all smells wrong. Still..."

"The way that you feel about your sister..." Kurt said after only a moment, "If you fell into that pit, and we never knew what had happened to you, do you think we would be able to just live with that? Whether or not it is safe or easy, you are our friend, Piotr. We will not forsake you, in this place or any other."

The sentiment seemed to generally be universal among the X-men. They'd already been through so much together, that the idea of abandoning any one of them just because it was safer for the others was totally ridiculous to them all. They were together. They were a team.

Soon, Bobby Drake leapt right out from the ledge, towards the middle of the room, seeming to fire ice from his very fingertips. Just as his icy powers took effect, the group could see what he'd been up to all along. A large, spiraling slide had formed along the edges of the room, made of ice, complete with rails on the sides and everything. He'd already used it to slide down to the very bottom of the pit. All that remained was for the others to follow.

Jubilation, Scott, Kurt, and Logan all followed, eager to escape the trouble and pain of trying to climb or fall down that distance. At last, however, Piotr transformed and, true to his word, leapt into the pit on his own, followed at a safe distance by Ororo. When Ororo got to the bottom of the pit again, and reached the slick, stone slide, she could see that large holes had been blasted in the surrounding rock, leaving behind the body parts of many dead daemons, but fortunately, none remained alive.

Ororo didn't dare touch the slide itself, regardless of the fact that all of the others seemed to have descended by that route. She sped through the air, moving quickly and noiselessly down the tunnel covering the long, stone slide, and sure enough, she was starting to see both the paths in the slick goo where her friends had recently slid down, and the eventual exit of the slide at the very end, leading to a fiery red glow just outside.

As soon as Ororo emerged from the long slide just a few moments later, she could see that her friends were still alright. The floor was no more than a couple yards down from the base of the slide, and after his own initial fall, Bobby had fashioned another ice slide to ease the descent of his friends to the floor. Ororo descended quickly, until she was about at eye level with her friends, although as usual, she never quite touched down when she got to ground level.

Sure enough, the place the X-men had found themselves in was several times more forbidding than any place they'd been in before. It seemed to be some kind of large cavern with lava streams running right by the stone floors on the left, and hot springs about a dozen yards to the right. It was a worrying place, and the heat and eerie glow of the lava would easily have terrified a young girl, even if she'd known what it was.

"Alright." Logan muttered upon seeing that Ororo had joined them, "That's everybody."

For a moment, Logan looked around for evidence of what had happened to Illyana after reaching the stone platform they were on, but as he sniffed the air, he noticed something unpleasant, and his head whipped around to the left in alarm.

"What happened to her after she reached this point?" Piotr asked, "What else happened to my sister?"

"Shh... Shaddup." Logan said again, though with less of an aggravated edge to his warning, "Somebody's here."

"Illyana?" Piotr asked as quietly as he could.

"Don't smell like no kinda human I ever met." Logan replied, "There's one with... No... Make that three... five... Yeah. Five of 'em."

"Six," came a voice from the shadows behind them, "but one's got the power to disguise his own scent."

Quickly, the whole group spun around to face the new arrival, but he was just standing there, smiling with his arms folded, and leaning against the stone wall right behind them.

He was a daemon, of course, but he looked surprisingly human, with only an extra eye in the center of his forehead, and an extra arm on each side to alert the X-men to the fact that he hadn't been a simple human being. He might easily have passed for a mutant, if not for his clear malevolence.

"Who are you?" Scott demanded to know.

"Why does that matter?" the daemon asked.

"Whadda you want?" Logan asked, at which point the daemon smiled.

"Same as everybody, I guess." the daemon said, "Survival. This here's a mighty nice spot for a daemon. Water... Warmth... Only a few lower-class harpies to worry about every so often. It ain't a bad spot to live, and the Baras Gang... We don't like when outsiders try to muscle in on our turf. No, sir. That don't make us the least bit happy."

Just then, there was a sound from nearby; off to the right, near the hot springs. It sounded like an enormous saw, grinding against solid stone as a series of large crashing noises impacted with the ground. In short, it was the sound of approaching daemons. Logan's muscles tensed up. He had to hope and pray that the training with the X-men had been enough, because there was no way he could protect the students from six enemies at once.

"Shoulda stayed wherever you were I guess." the humanoid daemon said, "The Baras Gang... We tend to get pretty rough when someone gets on our nerves..."


To be continued...