3. FIRST ENCOUNTER.
"So how are we going to get out of this place?" asked Roberto. "We can't even see the way that we came in."
"I know," said Bobby. "Don't worry; I'm working on that."
"And do you have any answers yet?" asked Jubilee.
"Actually, no, I don't," he admitted. "But something's bound to turn up sooner or later. Just give me a little more time."
"If you ask me," said Amara, "the first thing that we need to do is to find some shelter. Some place where it's warm. And then we need to find out just what this place is, and where we are."
"Do you think that there are any people living here?" asked Jamie. "I mean, we haven't seen any at all yet. What if there aren't any around for miles?"
"We'll just have to deal with that problem when it comes," said Amara. She glanced briefly at Bobby, as if to say "And we still wouldn't be in this predicament if you hadn't been tampering with the machine," but this time said nothing.
"So which way do we go?" asked Jubilee. "I mean, every direction from here looks the same."
"Maybe you can help out here, Rahne," suggested Roberto. "I mean, wolves have a really keen sense of smell. You could morph into one and find out if there's anything that your nose can pick up to tell us which way we should go in."
"Very well," said Rahne. "But I canna promise anything."
With that, she shifted into her wolf-form, and sniffed the air intently. Then, only half a minute later, she changed back into her human shape. "There are people coming this way," she said. "And horses, too!" She pointed to the west. "I could pick up their scent!"
"People?" said Bobby. "Well, that's not so bad. We can just ask them where we are, in that case. Problem solved."
"Except that it still won't help us get back to the Institute, if we're in another dimension," said Amara. "And besides, if this is another dimension, then there's no telling what these people might be like. They may not be all that friendly; have you considered that?"
"There was something about them that smelt odd," said Rahne. "They smelled like people, but there was something different about them. I canna quite lay a finger on it, though."
"Well, we'll find out soon enough," said Bobby. "Let's just stay where we are, and wait for them to show up. Then I'll just ask them a few questions. It's as simple as that."
The eight youngsters stood where they were, waiting. Snow continued to fall and many of them, including Jamie, began to shiver with the cold.
"Say, Amara," said Jubilee. "Couldn't you warm things up a little for us?"
"Well, yes," said Amara. "But I can't just make some more fire until we find out more about these people that Rahne smelt. If they don't like mutants, then we definitely don't want to use their powers around them."
"I wish that it was a sunnier day," said Roberto, looking up glumly at the sky. "We should have come here in the summer. The sun would be a lot stronger then."
"Well, it's too late to change that," said Rahne. "Besides, I think that those people that I smelled are almost here."
All eight of them could now hear the approaching snorting of horses, coming from the west. And then, into the clearing, there rode a small group of horsemen.
There were perhaps ten of them in all. They were all dressed in chainmail hauberks and conical helmets, looking as if they had just stepped out of a panel in the Bayeux Tapestry; they had round or kite-shaped shields slung on their arms, spears in their hands, swords at their belts, and heavy fur-lined cloaks. Their leader had a bright crimson plume upon his helmet.
That medieval display would have been enough to startle the New Mutants, by itself. But what drew their attention even more was that there was something different about their build and features. They seemed a bit taller and thinner than an ordinary human, and their faces, while humanoid enough, had an odd cast to them, something that felt somehow "wrong", but which none of the New Mutants could describe. The closest that Bobby could come to was that their features had an overly delicate cast to them. They reminded him vaguely of "greys" in cheap science fiction movies.
"Um, hi there," he said, overcoming his astonishment - this was most likely another dimension, after all; naturally, things would be different here - and holding up one hand to greet them in the inevitable parley style found in the movies. "Nice day, isn't it? We were wondering if you could -"
The leader of the horsemen stared down at him and the others for a moment, sizing them up, apparently. Then he spoke. "Take them!"
The knights spurred forward, all riding down upon the New Mutants, spears lowered and couched.
"Okay, so they're not friendly," said Bobby, glancing at Amara in a "You don't have to say 'I told you so'" manner. "So let's just show them that they picked on the wrong bunch of kids!"
As he spoke, he raised his hands, and shot out a solid wall of ice, a couple of feet in front of himself. The two horsemen closest to him had to rein in their mounts hurriedly, to avoid colliding with it.
At the same time, the other New Mutants sprang into action. Amara, Jubilee, and Ray all "opened fire" on the riders galloping at them, sending fire, fireworks, and electricity respectively in front of their horses, which bolted, turning about and running wildly in the direction from which they had come. Rahne returned to her wolf-form, sprang at one knight, and knocked him out of his saddle, pinning him to the ground and growling. Sam propelled himself at another knight, ramming him off his horse. Roberto snatched up his spear and swung it at yet another of the horsemen, forcing him to take cover behind his shield.
As for Jamie - as the youngest of the New Mutants, and the only one among them without any useful skills in a fight, he began to move back, carefully keeping the "older kids" between the mysterious riders and himself. One of the horsemen, however, managed to circle around the other youngsters, and charged straight at him. Jamie retreated faster, and accidentally stumbled over a tree root, hitting the ground hard and automatically producing a fresh batch of duplicates of himself.
Astonished, the knight reined in his horse, and stared down at the small group of identical twelve-year-olds, although it was difficult to tell whether he was simply taken aback at seeing Jamie's ability, or attempting to work out which one of the boys was the real one, before he seized one. If it was the latter, however, he never had the opportunity to make the discovery and act upon it. Bobby turned around just in time to see Jamie's peril, and quickly shot a blast of ice at the horseman, sending him flying off his steed.
"Okay," he said, preparing another ice attack. "Anyone want seconds?"
The New Mutants' assailants, however, had had enough; they had clearly not been expecting this level of resistance. They broke free from the youths, mounted their horses, and quickly rode off, back the way that they had come.
"Yes!" cried Bobby eagerly, as he and the others watched them go. "We beat them! We did it!"
"But who were they, anyway?" asked Jubilee. "And what did they want with us?"
"How should I know?" asked Bobby with a shrug. "What matters is that those Tolkien rejects are gonna think twice before bothering us again."
"Well, I say that this has just provided us with yet another reason why we need to find a way out of this place, whatever it is," said Amara. "The locals are definitely not friendly. And we need to get out of this cold, too. We're not dressed warmly enough for this sort of weather. I am certainly not catching pneumonia on account of someone's tendency to poke his nose into things that are none of his business."
Bobby gave her a dirty look at that last part, but said nothing. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's get going."
The eight of them trudged off through the snow, shaking their trousers and shoes every so often to keep the snow from lodging itself too firmly. None of them said anything now, as they huddled together under the force of the wind.
* * *
It was a dejected and battered-looking troop of dark elf knights who rode slowly back into the clearing where Loki and the remaining dark elves were waiting. Loki casually banished the small sphere of light that he had been gazing intently into, and looked at the leader. "Ah, welcome back," he said, nodding cheerfully. "A battle well-fought, Heimir."
"Well-fought?" said the dark elf knight in astonishment. "How can you say that, Laufeyson? They drove us off! A troop of us, the most puissant among the warriors of Svartalfheim, routed by little more than children, and children of Midgard at that!"
"I know," said Loki. "I saw the entire battle from here. And I am very pleased with the results."
"You must be jesting, Loki!" cried Heimir. "We return empty-handed -"
"You were never actually supposed to capture them," said Loki. "That was not your errand. Rather, I merely wished you to put those younglings and their abilities to the test. I needed to find out what they could achieve in battle. And having seen all that, I find them all the more promising as allies."
"What?" cried Heimir, his eyes flashing in astonishment and anger. "You sent us against those youngsters to be defeated by them, and did not even tell us that that was what you wanted?"
Loki nodded. "I wanted you to believe that you were there to take them prisoner," he explained, in a very smooth and utterly unfazed tone of voice. "Thus your efforts would be more convincing, and would not appear feigned. Our young visitors had to believe that they were in a genuine life-or-death struggle, so that I could have a proper study of their abilities."
"You truly are the Father of Lies, trickster," said Heimir in a wrathful tone of voice, the other dark elves nodding in assent. "Why are we even taking orders from you, if you betray and mislead us in this manner?"
"Now, now, now," said Loki, in a mock-chiding tone of voice. "Just remember this, Heimir. You need my help to invade Asgard and crush the Aesir. Without my leadership, you'll attain nothing. And I hardly believe that you desire that, now, do you?"
The dark elf scowled, but was silent for a while. At last he spoke. "What do you intend to do next?" he asked.
"Well, the first step is complete," said Loki. "I now know the abilities, and their level of effectiveness, for all eight of those children. So I know what use I can put them to, and how I may deploy them. And now, we move on, to the second step."
"So how are we going to get out of this place?" asked Roberto. "We can't even see the way that we came in."
"I know," said Bobby. "Don't worry; I'm working on that."
"And do you have any answers yet?" asked Jubilee.
"Actually, no, I don't," he admitted. "But something's bound to turn up sooner or later. Just give me a little more time."
"If you ask me," said Amara, "the first thing that we need to do is to find some shelter. Some place where it's warm. And then we need to find out just what this place is, and where we are."
"Do you think that there are any people living here?" asked Jamie. "I mean, we haven't seen any at all yet. What if there aren't any around for miles?"
"We'll just have to deal with that problem when it comes," said Amara. She glanced briefly at Bobby, as if to say "And we still wouldn't be in this predicament if you hadn't been tampering with the machine," but this time said nothing.
"So which way do we go?" asked Jubilee. "I mean, every direction from here looks the same."
"Maybe you can help out here, Rahne," suggested Roberto. "I mean, wolves have a really keen sense of smell. You could morph into one and find out if there's anything that your nose can pick up to tell us which way we should go in."
"Very well," said Rahne. "But I canna promise anything."
With that, she shifted into her wolf-form, and sniffed the air intently. Then, only half a minute later, she changed back into her human shape. "There are people coming this way," she said. "And horses, too!" She pointed to the west. "I could pick up their scent!"
"People?" said Bobby. "Well, that's not so bad. We can just ask them where we are, in that case. Problem solved."
"Except that it still won't help us get back to the Institute, if we're in another dimension," said Amara. "And besides, if this is another dimension, then there's no telling what these people might be like. They may not be all that friendly; have you considered that?"
"There was something about them that smelt odd," said Rahne. "They smelled like people, but there was something different about them. I canna quite lay a finger on it, though."
"Well, we'll find out soon enough," said Bobby. "Let's just stay where we are, and wait for them to show up. Then I'll just ask them a few questions. It's as simple as that."
The eight youngsters stood where they were, waiting. Snow continued to fall and many of them, including Jamie, began to shiver with the cold.
"Say, Amara," said Jubilee. "Couldn't you warm things up a little for us?"
"Well, yes," said Amara. "But I can't just make some more fire until we find out more about these people that Rahne smelt. If they don't like mutants, then we definitely don't want to use their powers around them."
"I wish that it was a sunnier day," said Roberto, looking up glumly at the sky. "We should have come here in the summer. The sun would be a lot stronger then."
"Well, it's too late to change that," said Rahne. "Besides, I think that those people that I smelled are almost here."
All eight of them could now hear the approaching snorting of horses, coming from the west. And then, into the clearing, there rode a small group of horsemen.
There were perhaps ten of them in all. They were all dressed in chainmail hauberks and conical helmets, looking as if they had just stepped out of a panel in the Bayeux Tapestry; they had round or kite-shaped shields slung on their arms, spears in their hands, swords at their belts, and heavy fur-lined cloaks. Their leader had a bright crimson plume upon his helmet.
That medieval display would have been enough to startle the New Mutants, by itself. But what drew their attention even more was that there was something different about their build and features. They seemed a bit taller and thinner than an ordinary human, and their faces, while humanoid enough, had an odd cast to them, something that felt somehow "wrong", but which none of the New Mutants could describe. The closest that Bobby could come to was that their features had an overly delicate cast to them. They reminded him vaguely of "greys" in cheap science fiction movies.
"Um, hi there," he said, overcoming his astonishment - this was most likely another dimension, after all; naturally, things would be different here - and holding up one hand to greet them in the inevitable parley style found in the movies. "Nice day, isn't it? We were wondering if you could -"
The leader of the horsemen stared down at him and the others for a moment, sizing them up, apparently. Then he spoke. "Take them!"
The knights spurred forward, all riding down upon the New Mutants, spears lowered and couched.
"Okay, so they're not friendly," said Bobby, glancing at Amara in a "You don't have to say 'I told you so'" manner. "So let's just show them that they picked on the wrong bunch of kids!"
As he spoke, he raised his hands, and shot out a solid wall of ice, a couple of feet in front of himself. The two horsemen closest to him had to rein in their mounts hurriedly, to avoid colliding with it.
At the same time, the other New Mutants sprang into action. Amara, Jubilee, and Ray all "opened fire" on the riders galloping at them, sending fire, fireworks, and electricity respectively in front of their horses, which bolted, turning about and running wildly in the direction from which they had come. Rahne returned to her wolf-form, sprang at one knight, and knocked him out of his saddle, pinning him to the ground and growling. Sam propelled himself at another knight, ramming him off his horse. Roberto snatched up his spear and swung it at yet another of the horsemen, forcing him to take cover behind his shield.
As for Jamie - as the youngest of the New Mutants, and the only one among them without any useful skills in a fight, he began to move back, carefully keeping the "older kids" between the mysterious riders and himself. One of the horsemen, however, managed to circle around the other youngsters, and charged straight at him. Jamie retreated faster, and accidentally stumbled over a tree root, hitting the ground hard and automatically producing a fresh batch of duplicates of himself.
Astonished, the knight reined in his horse, and stared down at the small group of identical twelve-year-olds, although it was difficult to tell whether he was simply taken aback at seeing Jamie's ability, or attempting to work out which one of the boys was the real one, before he seized one. If it was the latter, however, he never had the opportunity to make the discovery and act upon it. Bobby turned around just in time to see Jamie's peril, and quickly shot a blast of ice at the horseman, sending him flying off his steed.
"Okay," he said, preparing another ice attack. "Anyone want seconds?"
The New Mutants' assailants, however, had had enough; they had clearly not been expecting this level of resistance. They broke free from the youths, mounted their horses, and quickly rode off, back the way that they had come.
"Yes!" cried Bobby eagerly, as he and the others watched them go. "We beat them! We did it!"
"But who were they, anyway?" asked Jubilee. "And what did they want with us?"
"How should I know?" asked Bobby with a shrug. "What matters is that those Tolkien rejects are gonna think twice before bothering us again."
"Well, I say that this has just provided us with yet another reason why we need to find a way out of this place, whatever it is," said Amara. "The locals are definitely not friendly. And we need to get out of this cold, too. We're not dressed warmly enough for this sort of weather. I am certainly not catching pneumonia on account of someone's tendency to poke his nose into things that are none of his business."
Bobby gave her a dirty look at that last part, but said nothing. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's get going."
The eight of them trudged off through the snow, shaking their trousers and shoes every so often to keep the snow from lodging itself too firmly. None of them said anything now, as they huddled together under the force of the wind.
* * *
It was a dejected and battered-looking troop of dark elf knights who rode slowly back into the clearing where Loki and the remaining dark elves were waiting. Loki casually banished the small sphere of light that he had been gazing intently into, and looked at the leader. "Ah, welcome back," he said, nodding cheerfully. "A battle well-fought, Heimir."
"Well-fought?" said the dark elf knight in astonishment. "How can you say that, Laufeyson? They drove us off! A troop of us, the most puissant among the warriors of Svartalfheim, routed by little more than children, and children of Midgard at that!"
"I know," said Loki. "I saw the entire battle from here. And I am very pleased with the results."
"You must be jesting, Loki!" cried Heimir. "We return empty-handed -"
"You were never actually supposed to capture them," said Loki. "That was not your errand. Rather, I merely wished you to put those younglings and their abilities to the test. I needed to find out what they could achieve in battle. And having seen all that, I find them all the more promising as allies."
"What?" cried Heimir, his eyes flashing in astonishment and anger. "You sent us against those youngsters to be defeated by them, and did not even tell us that that was what you wanted?"
Loki nodded. "I wanted you to believe that you were there to take them prisoner," he explained, in a very smooth and utterly unfazed tone of voice. "Thus your efforts would be more convincing, and would not appear feigned. Our young visitors had to believe that they were in a genuine life-or-death struggle, so that I could have a proper study of their abilities."
"You truly are the Father of Lies, trickster," said Heimir in a wrathful tone of voice, the other dark elves nodding in assent. "Why are we even taking orders from you, if you betray and mislead us in this manner?"
"Now, now, now," said Loki, in a mock-chiding tone of voice. "Just remember this, Heimir. You need my help to invade Asgard and crush the Aesir. Without my leadership, you'll attain nothing. And I hardly believe that you desire that, now, do you?"
The dark elf scowled, but was silent for a while. At last he spoke. "What do you intend to do next?" he asked.
"Well, the first step is complete," said Loki. "I now know the abilities, and their level of effectiveness, for all eight of those children. So I know what use I can put them to, and how I may deploy them. And now, we move on, to the second step."