"It's quiet," Strange said. "The plan is working."
Doctor Strange and Magik were standing on a sloped hillside, overlooking a blasted-out valley. Far in the distance they could see Belasco's castle, and the angry red glow of the rift to Earth. They hadn't seen a single resident of Limbo since they arrived.
"Hell is empty, and all the demons are above," Illyana mused. "Endangering our friends."
"Then we should keep moving. Do you need a moment to reorient yourself?
"No, actually I… know exactly where I am."
She let the wind blow through her hair. It had been a long time since she had felt it.
"Come on. We're looking for a lake."
Storm landed on a roof overlooking the main street of Chinatown.
"Anything?" Dani asked.
"Not a sign of him yet. It's too quiet. They must be skulking in the shadows, the cowards."
"Let's not lose our heads," Mirage put her hand on Ororo's shoulder.
"Certainly not," she pushed the hand aside and flew off.
"That's N'astirh's job."
"She's impressive, isn't she?"
Valkyrie watched Storm surge through the buildings on another search.
"Strong, stoic, holds command of thunder and lightning," Thor smirked. "I shouldn't be jealous, should I?"
"Jealous of what, your grace? Perhaps of something we haven't had a conversation about yet?"
She returned his smirk with a practiced talent and sauntered up ahead.
"Perhaps we could come to a… mutual arrangement, the three of us," he shrugged.
"The God of Thunder is playing with fire," Hank muttered.
"I found something more disturbing than the Hell Invasion to focus on," Kitty whispered back. "I hope Mercury and Wasp are being more productive."
Not far ahead, Mercury snaked her way out of a tea shop.
"Empty. No demons, but also no people. You don't think they're…"
"If they are, we're going to kill every last one of these slimes," Wasp said, venom in her voice.
"You're pretty intense when you're on the job, aren't you?"
"Don't know what you mean," Hope moved on ahead, tromping through a puddle.
By chance, Cessily caught something in her periphery. She shouted as a shape darted out of a nearby window. A slathering demon; though it had mostly abandoned its disguise, it was still wreathed in the paper lanterns that crisscrossed many the streets here.
Hope's pupils narrowed as she stepped in front of Mercury. Ants began to pour from every nearby crack in the streets, marching their way up the quadrupedal creature's legs at the Wasp's command.
The demon swatted at his arms in confusion as the assault continued. He dashed to the side, but he couldn't shake them off faster than they grabbed on. Soon his form was lost in the mass.
Hope kept her arm outstretched even after the demon stopped moving, a lump on the ground shimmering with the movement of thousands of ants.
"Miss Wasp, are you okay?"
"Yeah," she said, shaking her head. The others were running up now.
"Just making sure it was dead. It definitely is."
"You suffocated him with bugs," Valkyrie shuddered. "That's not very cool."
"Hey, it did the trick, didn't it?" Hope grinned wickedly.
"Do you think that was him?" Kitty asked.
"N'astirh?" Beast said. He looked over the creature as the tide of ants receded.
"No, this one seems rather run-of-the-mill. I wasn't quite… I didn't encounter the fellow myself while I was in Belasco's thrall - he seemed to enjoy his privacy - but I imagine he'd be more impressive looking."
He looked up and adjusted his glasses in surprise.
"Oh! Rather more like that."
Stepping through a doorway of tangible darkness came a new creature. Cessily would have first described it as like a dragon, or maybe a gargoyle. But he was far stranger than that. Batlike wings eclipsed his entire green, sinewy form. He stood on digitigrade legs like a bird, with a mane of scales down to his shoulders and a long, horselike snout. The skin around his mouth was pulled taut, the jaw of crooked teeth practically ripping their way free of his skull. It was truly uncanny to watch normal speech emerge from the mouth.
"Well, well," he croaked. "Fresh blood."
"It's beyond here," Illyana said. They crested a hill to find a dark, still lake. A wooded island sat low in the middle.
"Safe to say a swim would be a bad idea, yeah?" Strange asked. "We'll need some means of conveyance."
"Here, let me," Illyana held up a hand. She waved her arms and upper body and conjured several rings of arcane energy. A sinewy black boat constructed itself over the water, long enough for two passengers.
"You are… quite an adept sorceress," Strange said, not hiding his surprise.
"In Limbo, you either learn fast or you… I was going to say 'die' but there are much worse things than that in here."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Without my spells we'd have no way of reaching the soul."
"I can make a boat," Strange scoffed in mock offense.
"I don't doubt your magic. But getting there is the easy part," Magik leaned on the edge of the boat.
"Let me guess, Strange muttered. "There's a puzzle. These guys always leave puzzles."
"More annoying than that. The soul is inside a duck."
"A duck?"
"I don't know either. I was here for seven years, I sure didn't see any ducks. It's probably a basilisk that quacks, as a joke. The duck is in a box, buried under a tree on the island."
Strange held up his hand and brought the boat to a halt.
"What are you doing?" Illyana shouted. "We need to move."
"How do you know all this?"
"I told you, I was here for seven years."
"But this is Belasco's deepest, most closely guarded secret," Strange stood up in the boat. "You can't just find it lying around."
Illyana looked down.
"You can tell me. Call it doctor-patient confidentiality."
"I was in Limbo for seven years. But I wasn't with Ororo and the others for the entire time. For about a year or so, I was Belasco's apprentice."
As Illyana began to come clean, something new was emerging from Limbo. Another hoard of demons rode out. Each one was clad in crudely hammered metal, looking more like a soda can crumpled into their general shape than any kind of armor. Behind them, they pulled a chariot with lengths of chain, coasting through the air on infernal magic. The chariot's rider threw a leg over the side and fell a few yards or so into the aether, before they held out their arms and caught themselves aloft. They floated alongside the strange creatures of burden before breaking off towards the famous rust-red suspension bridge in the bay. A squalid, barely intact cape whipped around their body in the tainted wind, obscuring much of their features as they touched down. Only a dented and rusted helmet peaked over the maelstrom of ragged cloth, much of its red color long faded and stained.
"At long last," he wheezed.
He stood on the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, looking over the world of light he had long been absent from. Distorted by Limbo, but unmistakable. The real world. His world.
The old man removed this helmet, revealing the extent of the toll 18 years in Limbo had taken on his body. His hair was stark white and scraggly, with the texture of straw. It was matted from long periods of time confined in the helmet. The skin of his face - worn like leather and the color of tallow - was spotted and hung in deep bags from his chin and under his eyes. Much of it was obscured by a beard that had grown down to his navel, hidden inside his armor. But those eyes - even at his least his eyes twinkled with a cold rage, tempered in fire like steel knives. And now they radiated arcane power, turned skyward towards the portal hanging over San Francisco.
He muttered some ancient words in a language long unspoken, picked up in fragments over the course of his conquests. Sinewy ribbons of magic curled out of the portal from somewhere beyond. The power manifested in his palms, and began to spread up his arms and across his body. The color gradually returned to his skin as it pulled up tighter to his bones. Two grisly lengths of metal flew from inside his cape and cleaved his beard perilously close to the face. The hair that remained on his head grew shiny and full, but didn't darken beyond a lunar silver. His body filled out with muscle tone and definition. Magneto straightened his back and took a deep breath of the air over San Francisco Bay, a far cry from the acrid haze of the hellish place he came from.
Erik Lehnsherr had conquered Old Age. By the end of the day, he would conquer both Limbo and Earth, hold dominion over human and demon alike.
If one could tell the difference, that was.