Walking On Broken Glass
Part Six: Knight To Queen's Bishop Three
Lady Mortis laughs. "I don't think you're in any position to tell me what I can and can't do, little girl," she sneers as I push myself to my feet. "You don't have any influence here whatsoever." Then she hefts her blades again, and strikes a defensive posture. "But just so you feel better… why don't you try and stop me?" Not needing any further encouragement, I gather all my strength in my legs and lunge at her as quickly as I can, ducking inside the range of the larger of Mortis' two blades and rendering it next to useless. Tightening my right hand around the handle of its sword, I drive the katana up and forwards in a focused, hate-driven motion. I feel some momentary resistance, and then I feel the sword begin to bite through soft flesh as it plunges through her layer of protective armour. As it does so, I make sure I twist the blade as much as I can, to open the wound even wider and cause even more pain.
Yes, it's sadistic… but right now, I don't much care. This woman took away my children, and laughed about it right to my face. And if I don't get them back, she's going to drain them like grapes – so under the circumstances, I think I'm pretty damned justified. As I drive the sword even deeper into her body, I take the time to watch her eyes as she gasps in agony and struggles feebly against the blade. "How does that feel, you bitch?" I snarl, spitting the words at her like daggers. Then, to my amazement and horror, Mortis fixes her gaze with mine, her yellow eyes filling with satisfaction, and her gasps turn into loud, piercing laughter. Blood dribbles from the corner of her mouth but she doesn't seem fazed. She stumbles away from me, the sword still sticking out of her chest, and then she grasps its hilt and pulls the blade out slowly but surely, before throwing it to the floor and standing shakily for a moment or two. All the while, her gaze is still locked with mine and a demonic smile is emblazoned on her lips as she laughs insanely.
Then, I notice what's happening to her chest. Her armour is running and flowing into the wound, sealing it and knitting it back together like the wound were never there in the first place. Evidently I'm going to need a better strategy than simply beating her into submission…
"You arrogant, presumptuous fool," Mortis says derisively, spitting a bloody, purple glob of saliva at me as she does so. "I'm going to enjoy breaking you." She snaps her fingers and, behind me, a huge energy field blinks into existence, cutting me off from the rest of the X-Men as they try desperately to catch up with me. Then, Mortis nods over to where Rebecca is kneeling on the ground, chained to the marble throne that Mortis had made her own. "Why are you risking your neck for her? She's nothing but a thing grown in a Petri dish, a waste of genetic potential. Do you think she'd do the same for you?"
"Without question," I say immediately. "She's my daughter. She loves me. I love her."
"Do you?" Mortis chuckles. "Would you love her as much if she looked like this?" She gestures absently at Rebecca with her smaller blade, and I can see some magical energies rippling around her, changing her appearance to that of a half-Asian teenager, her hair going a rich purple colour and a small but still recognisable Crimson Dawn tattoo etched on her cold, distant features. The illusion's scarlet eyes regard me with a distasteful glare, just as Mortis is doing right at this moment, before it shimmers and fades like a heat-flare on the inside of my eyelids. "Would you still care about her then?"
"Yes," I say quietly. "And I would beg her forgiveness every single day for having to go through what I have, too – and if push came to shove, I'd let the Dawn take me before her every time." I smile thinly. "If there's one thing my life has taught me, it's that you never give up on your family. Rebecca and Tom are my family now, and I will not let you take them away from me."
"You don't have a choice," Mortis says simply, driving the point of her long sword into the cracked red ground and folding her arms nonchalantly. "I suppose you think I'm a monster for doing this, don't you?" she asks, suddenly sounding very curious.
I shrug, feeling my flesh hand tightening once again around the hilt of my one remaining sword. "That's not the first word that sprang to mind, but it'll do."
Mortis laughs. "And I suppose you think I don't understand what you're going through, don't you?"
"How could you understand?" I snap, furiously. "How could you understand what you've done to me – to them?"
"More easily than you might imagine," Mortis says, raising her sword and pointing at my son's tiny, wriggling form as he lies on the stone plinth beside Rebecca, screaming and wailing. "I had a son his age once, too, hundreds of years ago. I slit his throat because my masters asked me to sacrifice him to them. I took him in my arms as he bled to death, and I cried – but I knew that because I had done what I'd been asked to do, I would be rewarded." She smiles thinly, and holds up her long sword again. "And I was. My son's soul lives in this sword – in my Soul-Flayer. He will live forever, just as Rebecca and Tom will live forever – as you will live forever. Trust me."
"I'd rather die." My voice is cold and focused, and I can feel my shadow-half screaming at me to launch myself at her (and for once, the two halves of my being agree with each other). "I'd rather die than let you have them. I'd rather die than be your slave."
Mortis shrugs. "If that's the way you want it… that can be arranged." She swings her blade around expertly, letting the air hum softly as the sword cuts through it, and beckons me towards her again. "Come on, then, little girl. Let's get this over with." Maybe you'll have changed your mind by the time I'm done with you, she sends to me sarcastically.
And maybe you'll be dead, I reply, sourly. We'll have to see. Grasping my single remaining sword, I advance on Mortis with as much confidence as I can muster, closing to within touching distance, and then spin my sword up above my head in a battle-ready posture. My shadow-eye glitters with cold anticipation, and I can feel the rest of my body aching for the fight – as well as for other things. Being so close to my children, and yet being unable just to walk over to them and hold them, is bearing heavily on my mind.
I will not let Mortis see the pain this entire situation is causing me, though – she will never get that satisfaction, not while I'm still breathing. Taking one hand off the hilt of my sword for a moment, I extend it towards Mortis and beckon her closer, a slow smile spreading across my face. "Let's finish this," I say simply.
And then we collide again, our blades clanging off each other in a shower of sparks. Lady Mortis throws a low, chopping strike at my legs with the blade she called Soul-Flayer, aiming to hack through my calves and render me helpless. Parrying the black metal with my own sword, I use the momentary respite to launch a punch at Mortis' smug, arrogant face. Time seems to slow down as it impacts, and only returns to normal when I hear the satisfying sound of bone being crushed under my hand. Mortis howls with pain and lashes out wildly with her smaller blade. It carves a long gash down the flesh side of my face, opening my skin from the edge of my ear to the front of my cheek, causing black-tinged blood to stream out and patter lightly on the ground. Tendrils of shadow curl out from my shadow-flesh and link up with the blood, intent on turning more of my face into living darkness – but while I'm concentrating on Mortis, I can't turn them back, so the awful cold of the Dawn engulfs more of my body... but strangely, as more of my flesh succumbs to it, I can feel the Dawn bonding itself more and more to my will, as if the fusion of my shadow-flesh and real flesh is giving me greater control over the power that the Dawn represents.
Right now, it doesn't matter what I'm feeling. Ignoring the increased loss of sensation in my face, I aim a couple of quick, searching kicks at my opponent's midsection. They impact hard on the body armour that encircles her body, knocking her back a little but not doing too much obvious damage – and giving me an opening for my real attack. In the brief moment that she is staggered, I move inside her blades' range, grasp her left wrist, and flip her up and over in a simple hold-and-throw manoeuvre – one that is so textbook, it's one of the first things taught in the X-Men's self-defence classes back home. If the move is performed correctly, then Mortis' arm should break in about three places, making my job a lot easier.
Sure enough, as my enemy goes sailing through the air, I hear the gruesome sound of multiple cracks, and the awful shriek that Mortis makes as she lands directly on her smashed arm, her smaller blade skittering out of her grasp as she does so. I kick her prone form twice, quickly, out of some warped desire to satisfy my rage, and then step back to let her regain her footing. If I'm going to beat this creature, I want her to be able to look me in the eyes while I'm doing it.
Mortis rises to her knees, and then to her feet, her left arm hanging horribly limp, even inside the armour that encases it. Her face speaks of the litany of pain I can feel coursing through her flesh… until, that is, she manages to break a smile. As she raises her useless arm towards me, I can hear the sickening sound of bones snapping themselves back together. Then, Mortis flexes her fingers and folds her healed hand into a fist, examining her knuckles thoughtfully. "Is that the best you've got?" she asks, contemptuously. Then, moving with a speed that I had not thought possible, she surges towards me, her remaining sword raised and her eyes alight with hate. She lunges at me with her blade and I barely manage to deflect its edge with my own sword – but, too late, I realise that she was feinting just as much as I had been earlier. Her gauntleted free hand smashes into my cheek – almost the only part of my face that isn't entirely covered by living blackness by now – crushing the bone and making me stagger, and then she follows her opening salvo up with a brutal kick to the gut. What little air is left in my lungs is expelled in one horrible instant, and I am unable to prevent my knees from folding uselessly underneath me. I collapse at Mortis' feet, wheezing and crying, and Mortis looks down at me with utter contempt, disgust etching itself across her face. "Get up," she snarls. "Get up!" Finally, frustrated at my inability to muster any strength to do as she is demanding, she reaches down one-handed, grasps the collar of my bodysuit and drags me up to her eye-level, my feet dangling an inch or so off the ground. "Don't make this so easy!" Disgusted, she makes as if to throw me back to the floor, as if this is the moment when she will finally take what she needs from me.
In that single instant before she does so, however, I find myself recalling what I've seen during my time in this crazed alternate dimension: the death, the blood, the insanity – and the Dawn trying to infect others every time I touched them. A flash of grim inspiration sparks in the centre of my brain, and I raise my shadow-hand to Mortis' face and grab hold of it. "You want power, you bitch?" I hiss. "Then take mine." In the following instant, I focus every last scrap of my will in the centre of my mind, and then, slowly but surely, force the darkness that has replaced my hand to move from my fingers into Mortis' skin. It is hard at first, and Mortis tries to throw me off desperately as she feels what it is I'm doing, but I hold on, no matter how hard she thrashes. I can feel my brain beginning to burn with the effort, can feel the restored flesh of my nose wet with blood, but it pays off as the living darkness flows off me, faster and faster, enveloping Mortis' body hungrily – and because she has never encountered power like this before, Mortis has no idea how to fight it. It is literally eating her alive, and she cannot stop it.
Somewhere, someone is screaming. It takes me a moment to realise that Mortis and I are crying out in unison, howling together as the Dawn's living darkness momentarily makes us one single being. She paws weakly at me with her hands, unable to stop the Dawn crawling up her nostrils into her brain, down her throat into her guts and through her skin into her bones, until at last I let go of her, feeling the last squealing, yowling fragment of the Dawn pulling itself away from my soul, like a muscle tearing from a bone. I take a few steps back then, dazed, my body fully cleansed of the wounds I'd suffered to get here, and finally see the full horror of what I have done.
Mortis is standing transfixed, darkness boiling across her skin and turning flesh to shadow and back again, almost in the blink of an eye. She thrashes against it uselessly, screaming with a horrible terror as the Dawn begins to consume her, piece by piece, from the inside out. Her sword clatters to the ground hollowly, and she begins to stagger, clawing at her face in futile panic as the Dawn eats her eyeballs. Behind her, I can see a patch of shadow created by an overhanging outcropping of rock. Pushing some energy into my tired limbs from somewhere deep inside me, I drag myself forwards and close with Mortis again. I wait until she has sensed my presence, even in her crazed state, and then I lead her towards the blackness, like the Pied Piper leading the children of Hamlin into the mountains. As we near the curtain of shadow, I sidestep her maddened flailing and push her towards the darkness, before planting a foot squarely into the small of her back and sending her plunging into the shadows. She screams as she disappears, a horrible, discordant wail that lingers for a few seconds before dissipating into the air as if it had never existed.
As soon as she is gone, the barrier behind me vanishes, its energy evaporating just as quickly as Mortis' death-howl. Taking advantage of that, Warren, Logan, and the rest of the team I brought here (including the energy-wielders I'd left on the cliff above) all crowd towards me, stunned at what I've done. I don't have time for them all right now, though – I have two much more pressing concerns. Walking over to Rebecca and Tom, as quickly as my tired limbs will allow, and after retrieving my lost sword, I kneel down and take my first good look at my daughter since I got here. She is battered and bruised, her face a mass of purple welts, and her clothes are little more than rags, but she is alive, and that's the main thing. Tom, similarly, is not in the best condition appearances-wise – he is naked, disgruntled, and bawling as loudly as he can – but other than that, and a few scratches here and there, he's fine. It's a tough call as to who to go to first, but Rebecca is in worse shape overall, so I kneel down beside her and lift her chin up gently. "Hello, button," I say, softly. "Time to go home."
Rebecca looks up at me for a moment or so, through slightly-glazed eyes. "You're not real," she mumbles, turning her eyes back to the ground and shaking her head insistently. "You're just another illusion. She's trying to trick me again."
I shake my head vigorously. "No," I tell her firmly. "No, button, we're real." I reach out with the fingers of my right hand and, after tucking a wayward ringlet of blonde hair behind my daughter's left ear, run them down the soft skin of Rebecca's cheek. "See?" Putting my arms around her gently, I kiss her on the forehead and rock her quietly back and forth for a moment or so, letting my concern for her flood into her mind unreservedly. "We've come to take you home."
Rebecca enfolds me with her shackled arms and hugs me tightly. "It's really you," she whispers, almost in disbelief. "I thought I'd never see you again."
I smile despite everything, and kiss Rebecca on the cheek. "Sorry, Rebecca. I had to come and check up on you – mother's obligations, you see." Behind me, I can hear the rest of the X-Men finally arriving to help me, with Warren at their head. When my husband is close enough, I let him help Rebecca to her feet and move to where Tom is lying. Picking him up and cradling him softly, I try singing a gentle lullaby to him, to get him to settle a little – at least until I can get him back to the mansion. "Shh, love, shh," I murmur softly. "It's all right… I'm here now." Turning, I see Wolverine slashing Rebecca's chains to fragmented metal shards, before Warren throws her arm over his shoulder and helps her to stand. When he has done that, I can see Sam, Scott and Bishop have joined up with the rest of the team, having obviously freed themselves from the situation at the top of the cliff-face. While Scott and Bishop scan the area to make sure it truly is secure, Sam walks quickly over to where Rebecca is testing her balance, and hugs her quietly.
"Hey, honey," he says, in such a tender tone of voice that I almost can't hear him. Even if I couldn't, the meaning is still clear (I can see it in his thoughts, as clearly as if he had written it in chalk on a blackboard). "Missed you."
"Missed you too, corn-fed," Rebecca says hoarsely, clinging to him as if he is her only link to life. "I… I love you."
"I love you too," Sam replies, kissing her cautiously on her bruised forehead before giving her a half-hearted smile and gesturing with his thumb towards the portal that brought us here. "You want to get going?"
Rebecca nods. "Very much." She holds out her hands and lets Sam take her weight gratefully, resting against him for a second or two.
Suddenly, the metal frame above us (which we had all done our best to ignore) begins to detach itself from the ceiling of the cavern, unrolling from its moorings with a screeching of tormented metal, pieces of it crashing down behind us and depositing its prisoners in screaming knots on the cave's floor. Driven utterly insane by the agony the frame inflicted on them, the hundreds of surviving prisoners turn their frothing, bloody-eyed faces towards us and howl for satisfaction before charging. Evidently this was some form of failsafe device that Mortis had in place should her plans get thwarted – with us dead, she would at least gain some measure of vengeance. At this point, however, I have no time for any kind of rearguard action – I simply want to go home. Come on, I send to my team-mates as I begin to run towards the path that will lead us out of here, clutching Tom to my chest protectively. Let's get out of here.
And so we run, with Scott, Bishop and Sam firing energy blasts behind us from time to time to try and slow down the rampaging horde that is getting closer to us with every footfall. Sam holds onto Rebecca every time she stumbles, his strong hands helping her tired feet to keep her upright. Brian breaks the neck of a misshapen beast as it gets too close, crushing its windpipe in his fist without blinking, while Meggan guts another monster, splashing herself liberally with its blood in the process. Logan joins them, growling with bloodlust as he does so, his gore-slicked claws cutting apart anything that gets in his way. While those three do their best to slow the advance of the creatures physically, I use my telepathy to plant seeds of dissent and confusion in their broken minds. It's not much, and I dearly wish I could join my brother in the physical confrontation that he is currently engaged in, but the small body I have clutched to my chest constantly reminds me precisely why I cannot surrender to the warrior inside me. So, instead, I use my powers to make monsters chew each other to pieces and beat each other senseless with their own limbs.
It's cold comfort. There is still a part of me that wants to throw itself into the melee without any further thought, to give myself over completely to the warrior inside me. Still, I have bigger concerns right at this moment, and I think I should concentrate on those for the time being. The team continues its systematic withdrawal to the portal, Bishop laying down a sustained carpet of plasma bursts in order to let Brian and Meggan fall back, and Warren using his wings to batter the more hardy creatures into submission as they catch up to him. It's been quite frightening to see him sending bodies flying like broken toys with only a simple sweep of his wings, actually – I've always been so used to seeing his wings as beautiful, gentle things, so to see them mangling Warren's foes with a single strike is quite disconcerting, to say the least.
We run all the way back to the tunnel that will get us back to the portal, ducking and covering our heads as chunks of sharp rock fall from the ceiling like daggers. Flying ahead of us, Brian punches the larger pieces to dust, his fists hammering into the rock almost mechanically. "Do we have everybody?" he shouts, over the din of the stones being powdered.
Bishop glances around, taking in every face with a quick, perfunctory spot-check. "We do," he says, calmly snapping off a dozen shots with his rifle, which each find their mark perfectly. Diseased mutant skulls burst like watermelons as the energy passes straight through them, brains splattering the sandstone floor and walls of the tunnel. "We should move, now," he continues, pointing towards the upper mouth of the passageway, through which I can just about see the black, yawning surface of the portal.
I'm in full agreement with him, so I begin to run towards the portal ahead of me, with my ragtag team of X-Men following right behind me. We're almost at the portal, with the demon host hot on our heels, when Sam loses his grip on Rebecca and she trips and stumbles, falling to the floor bonelessly. It's only a few moments before we notice, but in that time a lithe, sinuous fiend with a mouthful of razors and hands tipped with hooks is already upon her, leaping through the air with its teeth bared and its claws unsheathed. A look of sheer ecstatic joy is emblazoned on its crazed features as it bears down on my daughter, ready to tear her flesh from her bones. I'm only a few fractions of a second away from unleashing a psi-bolt, and I can sense that Scott and Sam are the same with their respective powers. Rebecca herself is too exhausted and powerless to do anything except close her eyes and wait for the monster to kill her – until the moment when, to everyone's surprise, an energy bolt streaks from behind us all and hits the monster squarely in the chest, vaporising its ribcage in an instant. It falls, twitching, and then lies still. Looking behind me, I can see Bishop stood there, a deep, penetrating scowl on his face and a wisp of smoke escaping from the muzzle of his gun. "I said," he begins, "that we should move."
For a moment, we are all too stunned to move, but then the din from only a little way down the tunnel forces us to pick up our feet. Sam scoops Rebecca up into his arms and blasts forwards, passing through the portal before there can be any chance of a repeat performance of what just happened, and then the rest of us arrive at the dark doorway, its liquid surface rippling with energy. "You go," I tell Warren when he urges me to go first. "Here." I hand him our son, and stand with my back towards the portal, my swords drawn and ready. "Don't worry – I'll be right behind you." Brian begins to protest as well, before Meggan silences him and drags him through the portal. Before long I am alone, and the rampaging throng of monsters is bearing down upon me, getting closer with every step. When they are close enough for me to almost see the whites of their eyes, I smile. "Sorry," I whisper softly. "I win."
And with that, I step backwards into the portal, watching the monsters howl with dismay as their final prize is denied them. My family has been reunited, and now I'm going home.
It's a good feeling.