Call this world Ishmael. Here, the Afroasian, Turkic, and Austronesian nations are superpowers...as is the common Allah they worship.
Ah, the highland cedar forests of Lebanon... Much dark magic is speculated to take place out here. But then, what does one expect? This is the Afroasian Empire.
Throughout the forest, white wolves drag human bodies through the undergrowth. They're not bleeding...but they might as well be. They've been bitten; all of them. There are over a dozen.
These white wolves are magical specimens. They can shapeshift into their victims. Their claws are also longer and shinier than a muggle wolf's. Their master calls them the Deathwolves.
Two are wizards. One's Irish. The other's Westphalian. By the leg, the two wolves haul them through the highland forests of Lebanon.
Soon, they part ways. They've been ordered to bump these bodies off far from one another.
One wolf leaves Feron by a river bank. Feron is a boyish wizard with bandages all over his feet. He also wears a green robe...which he once looted from Executioner, one of his Crazy Gang enemies.
If Feron's feet touch the ground, the Phoenix Force will come for him. Feron cares too much about Excalibur, and Ishmael in general, to risk that.
With that, the wolf leaves him, having done his job. At some point, Feron will wake up. With luck, he'll still remember not to take off those foot bandages when that happens.
The other wolf drags Jimaine Szardos into a deep dark spot in the woods, and leaves her. Again, she's a witch. Her father is a North Rhine-Westphalian, and her mother is a Romani witch. And just in case her name is hard for you to pronounce, Jimaine is also known by the alias Amanda Sefton, a flight attendant.
Once, Ms. Szardos was the mutant Nightcrawler's lover. Much has changed since. Nowadays, she's avoiding Kurt for his own protection...as he is for hers.
To separate Warlock from the rest of Excalibur, that takes several wolves. Warlock is a technarch; he's a specimen of an alien species, of which each specimen is made up of microbots in lieu of cells. Also, technarchs can absorb energy much like a conductor absorbs electricity. They often do this involuntarily; hence, several wolves have to do the transporting, just to make sure that one wolf doesn't get too tired to drag him before getting to the drop-off site.
They leave him in a meadow...where he can't shapeshift into anything without standing out. (Technarchs can shapeshift, too.)
As another wolf drags Cerise off, her wounded body leaves Shi'ar feathers in its wake. As a Shi'ar, Cerise has Avian wings, which cultivate white, pink, maroon, and black feathers. Where she comes from, all Shi'ar have wings like this. The Avians/Inhumans of Aerie do, too...although Cerise is less sure how much DNA she and they've in common. Otherwise, her hair is pink, and short...like some versions, at least, of the singer P!nk.
Once, she was a great Shi'ar warrior. Now she's a deserter who's sworn fealty to Excalibur.
Like Ms. Szardos, Cerise is also an ex-lover of Nightcrawler. That's easy to understand; they both know what it's like to be perceived as freaks by most people.
These wolves' boss doesn't fancy a hostile encounter with the Grand Jhar. So, they leave her body in a depression surrounded by rocks; both for their own protection, and the protection of everything they love...material though it is.
By one leg, and while he's wearing a nice suit, a wolf drags Pete Wisdom deep into the forest. Wisdom might look like your ideal James Bond...but he can be quite the bad boy when not put to the test.
Also, he's a mutant. James Bond isn't.
Another wolf follows. He's got what looks like a little lavender dragon in his jaws. Whatever it is, it's unconscious...rather like Wisdom.
It's a Flock of Sleazeworld. Sleazeworld is far from here. Shadowcat should know, if she doesn't. Wisdom was once Shadowcat's lover.
The first wolf leaves Wisdom atop a hill, and runs off. The second wolf drops Lockheed, the Flock, atop him, and runs after the first wolf.
A white wolf drags Dazzler through the woods...by one of her bare legs. She's in a sparkly white dancing dress. The dress glitters, each time the wolf drags her through a gap in the forest canopy.
She bears the likeness of Kristen Bell. White looks good on her, too...
The wolf finds a very quiet spot in the forest...where not even the shrike dares shriek. (As a mutant, Dazzler can convert sound into light; and VERY spectacularly so, if you asked Emma Frost or Charles Xavier...) The wolf leaves gorgeous, young, blonde Dazzler here, and scurries off.
Another wolf drags Sage through the cedar forest. She's a mutant who can mentally compute, control biology, and read minds. She wears her raven hair in a bob.
She's been tied up; the wolf drags her by a rope. Those are some of the trickiest knots anyone's ever seen.
For this, the wolf ascends a fallen tree, dragging her along. He leaves her in the top of it, and scurries off.
Another wolf drags Jubilee through the forest. She's a Chinese mutant who can generate lumikinetic explosive light blasts (i.e. "fireworks").
She'll be lonely, no doubt, when she wakes and Lockheed isn't there. But then, that's exactly what these wolves' boss was thinking when he assigned these wolves to divide Excalibur.
The wolf drags her deep into a cave, and leaves her there. If she tries to set off her mutant fireworks down there, the smoke from them will likely suffocate her. Plus, the cave's loneliness might make her too depressed to try to find her way out.
By one leg, a wolf drags En Sabah Nur across the deserts of Saladin. Nur is an immortal Coptic mutant, who can also control Celestial energy, teleport, run at superhuman speeds, control his own molecules, and can do many things with his mind...including fly.
He owes his immortality to his status as an External among mutants. Besides him, there are only nine other Externals.
Alas, that's sure not helping him now. Took a lot of magic for this wolf's boss to knock Nur out. But somehow, he has. Now, Nur looks much like a page from the royal palace of Ancient Egypt.
At the edge of Lake Tharthar, the wolf hurls him, via his leg. Nur's unconscious body spirals through the sky, and splashes down in the lake's center. He's a lot heavier than he looks, so the splash is very big.
Sturgeons scatter, as Nur settles at the lake bottom. Too bad the wolf's boss didn't think to send him in a sarcophagus, to accommodate for him. But then, that's kind of the point: the wolf's boss is trying to weaken Excalibur. And if Nur drowns down here (fat chance), Excalibur will certainly lack a major strongman on their team...even if he is more Coptic than English.
On the surface, the now-separated team of British heroes/mutants seems leaderless. Don't worry; Goblet of Death didn't kill their leader. She's still alive.
Excalibur has been fragmented. Even if Nur meets the Lady of the Lake while down there, it'll take a LOT more than that to get this team of heroes back on its figurative sabatons...