xXx
Sweat poured down the blind man's face as he hefted another spadeful of earth. With a grunt, he tossed it on the pile of fresh-churned dirt. Then he stuck the shovel's point in the ground and leaned back, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pointed his sweaty face towards the distant sun. A chilly breeze rippled across the shorn cornfields around them.
"The grave… finished," he said hoarsely. "I need to sit down."
"By all means," the classically beautiful woman next to him said, looking around. Her reddish blonde hair gleamed in the November sunlight. The blind man with her knew what she looked like; he had not been blind for very long. She looked over at the flattened fairground that was still wisping smoke from being destroyed the night before.
"Now my brother is gone," the blind man said, lowering himself to his knees by the grave. "I won't bury him. My daughter is dead," he said, touching the cold earth of the fresh grave with a trembling hand. "It is time to turn my attention to my father."
He turned to the woman that stood by him. "Not twenty miles from here stands an old abandoned building, it looks like an old farm house. It was an orphanage for this county. I grew up there with my brother. In 1921 my brother and I were six years old, and that's when we first met the Dark Lord. He began his experiments, tying siblings to his network. We weren't the first," he said, and he listened to the wind as it rippled across the fallow field. He flexed his hands on the crumbling soil. "It was miraculous that we survived. Only two of us out of ten in that particular batch."
"Are you ready to lead us there?" the woman asked.
"No," he said, slowly shaking his head. "The Dark Lord is more cunning than that. I can't see anymore, and without my sense of tracing the power to its root, or at least following the veiled road, I can't find the place. There are magic screens around it, screens that turn the eye away and confuse the step. Out in the cornfields, it's impossible to find it if you do not know precisely where to look. No one has come to the heart of Nebraska to seek out evil," he added with a grimace.
"Is it entirely impossible to get there?" Valeria asked.
"No," the blind man shrugged. "If you know someone who has found their way in, someone who can see, then that person can find their way in again. But I know of no successful interlopers."
A stepping disk flared, full of pale dark light, ringed in eldritch fire. A thin man in a red coat stepped out, accompanied by a goat-legged but otherwise attractive young sorceress.
"Perhaps I can shed light on the affair," the thin man said. "First things first. Scott, are you finished here?"
"Yes," the blind man said dully.
"Valeria, are you ready to go?" the thin man asked the woman who watched over him.
"Say the word," she nodded.
"Strange, he said something about someone finding their way in," the goat-legged sorceress said. "You don't mean to wake up Kravinoff, do you?"
"No need," Strange said, his eyes probing the horizon. "Kravinoff showed Peter Parker the way through the maze."
"Ah," the sorceress replied.
"Perhaps you could go recruit him, Illyana," Strange said. "The time is approaching. The confrontation will not be delayed much longer."
A stepping disk carried Illyana away.
"I feel the years," Scott murmured. "They swirl in my mind like leaves in an autumn wind, trapped inside me and whispering restlessly. My mind feels dull. I… will not be of much help."
"You don't know that," Strange murmured. "We cannot always tell what our role will be."
xXx
Peter answered the door, and blinked. Illyana smiled at him sweetly.
"Got a couple hours, Pete?" she said. "We're about to go tackle the big bad guy. Here's the catch. We can't find his lair without getting through a magic maze. Unless we have somebody who's been inside. And I think you won't be terribly surprised to find out this lair is a dilapidated farmhouse."
Peter heaved a sigh. "Great," he said. "I knew that one was gonna bite me. Look, I can go with you, but I gotta call MJ. Hang on." He let her in, and as she closed the door he picked up the cordless phone and punched in a number.
"Yes, Mary Jane please," he said. He waited for a half a minute, then smiled. "Hey there," he said. "Something's come up. Something serious. I'm going with Strange." He listened for a minute, and nodded. "I'll be as careful as I can. I should be back by the time you get home. Take care of stuff, I'll see ya. I love you," he added seriously. Then he disconnected and tossed the phone on the couch. He smiled sheepishly at Illyana.
"I kind of want those to be my last words to her," he said, "so any time I set out on one of these nutty missions I tell her I love her so, you know, in case I don't come back she has that as our last…" He shrugged. "Okay, let me get my mesh and we're outta here."
xXx
The assembly was quiet for a moment. Valeria, Scott, Peter, Illyana, and Strange stood around the scrying pool in Limbo. Greenery bloomed all around them, and the hintings of dawn were brushed across the deep blue sky.
Valeria wore leather jacket and pants and boots, Scott was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt, Illyana wore a tunic and silver armor, Strange in slacks and a white shirt, his red coat over all, and Peter in mesh with his hood down.
"We are all keys," Strange said quietly. "The Dark Lord's stronghold is a puzzle box, and each of us is in a way a key to unlocking part of it. Are we ready to go?"
They nodded. Illyana opened the scry, and Peter stood next to her with his eyes half shut.
The scry turned and twisted as Peter focused and Illyana held the connection between them, her face screwed up in concentration. Then the scry settled on a farmhouse on the horizon, surrounded by fallow fields. Those looking at the image shivered slightly. It was wrong; the angles were all off, not a single right angle in the entire view. The house obeyed its own architectural rules now, and it seemed distressingly aware.
The stepping disk flared, and deposited the five of them at the bottom of a short rise, a road at their feet leading up to the farmhouse. The sky was the color of gunmetal, the wind was cold and as markedly steady as an ocean current. A faint stink of ozone hung in the air, and it was a bit harder to breathe than it should have been. All the colors were subtly wrong. Fear rippled through them.
"Nothing is as it seems," Strange said guardedly. "Beware, here in the center of the web of shadows." He knelt, and sifted a handful of dirt. "The very earth here is dead," he murmured. "Undead energy overflows from the air itself." He stood, brushing his hands against each other. "This place. It is a half step away from Prime. Just far enough to evade my detection. There are no spirits of earth here."
Illyana was quivering as she looked around, and the cold was not wholly responsible. "Okay, let's do this and get out of here," she said, her jaw trembling almost enough to make her teeth chatter.
Tears squeezed out of Scott's useless eyes; memories flooded him, and he had not the strength to keep them at bay. He said nothing.
Peter pulled the hood down on his mesh, so he was entirely lost in the shadow. As he led the way, the group approached the house. He got to the porch.
Nothing here is natural, whispered the spider ghost in the back of Peter's mind. This place is an abomination.
"We're going in," Peter murmured. He reached out and touched the door, having a strange dissonance with the last time he had been here, in the mind of his broken friend. Gently, he pushed the warped and weatherbeaten door open.
"Careful, Peter," Strange warned. "Illyana, with me. We'll watch over Scott. Valeria, check the place out. Peter, find the way further in."
Valeria and Peter disappeared into the house, and Scott dropped to his knees.
"Please," the blind man begged hoarsely. "I can go no further. I dare not go in there without any power. Let me stay here. I've done enough, for what I've become," Scott managed. "You can't protect me anyway, and if you fail you cannot imagine the horror of my fate." Strange exchanged a glance with Illyana. "Please," Scott said. "I insist." He flinched. "Peter has found the way further in," he whispered.
Valeria whirled through the house; she saw the spare kitchen with its long and cheerless table, she saw the closet where misbehaving children were locked until they saw the error of their ways. She saw the two dormitory rooms, cramped, three bunked beds lined up with lockers at the base as impersonal as a barracks. She saw the stains on the walls, the felt the creeping sensation of fear that even now hung in the haunted halls. There was nothing she could point to, nothing she could lay her hand on that infused the place with such a sense of intimidated servility or looming disaster, but nonetheless she felt her skin crawl and her heart thud dully in her chest as she moved through the abandoned rooms of what had once been an orphanage.
As she touched down at the base of the stairs, she saw Peter open an understairs closet.
"In here," he said, and she heard in his voice an echo of what she was feeling.
"I'll send the others in," she said. "Don't do anything rash."
Valeria reached the trio standing outside.
"Peter's found the way in, and I didn't run into any defenses," she said.
Strange and Illyana followed her, striding into the abandoned orphanage. Scott trailed behind.
They found Peter squatted over an open trapdoor. Wisps of an ancient stink wafted up on the cold current of air that came from the dank pit below.
Strange gestured, and a witchlight sprang from his palm. It floated down into the dankness, revealing a short drop to a root cellar. They climbed down, and the light drifted over to one of the walls. Peter followed it, and opened a walk-in freezer. At the back was a gaping tunnel that led into the bowels of the earth. They followed the witchlight as they walked down the tunnel; Peter stopped with a cold chill as he came to the top of the steps that led further down.
"This is where I ran into Kravinoff's image," Peter said. He took a deep breath. "Whatever's down there, it was enough to drive him insane."
"The question," Strange mused, "is whether Kravinoff escaped or whether he was released."
No one had anything to say to that. They followed the rough stone steps down through the earthen tunnel, lit only by the sorcerous light.
Dim light grew ahead of them. They reached the end of the stairs, and stepped out into an open cavern. Shaped into the walls of the cavern were shelves, and there were hundreds of screens and monitors set in the spacious cave. Dead pale light flowed from the monitors, flickering and dancing into deep shadow in the cave. At the far end was a dais, and upon the dais a throne fashioned from computerized technology and stone. Low slung monitors lit the figure on the throne from beneath, like hi tech footlights.
On the throne lounged a massive manlike creature. His eyes blazed ruby red, his face was too pale for mere greasepaint to emulate his pallor. His demeanor was almost petulant. Black rimed his nostrils and lips and eyes. He was dressed in black steel, or he was made of it; it was difficult to tell. Strips of the black material sprang from his shoulders and wove into the throne, into the dais, to the monitors and computers. He was smiling at them slightly.
"Welcome to my home," he said in a sibilant, slithering voice that instantly put them on edge. Behind them, a massive slab of tempered steel slid across the tunnel entrance, sealing them in the cave. The figure on the throne regarded them.
"I will leave when I please," he said, "but I would speak with the first ones in two hundred years to unravel my plans deeply enough to find one of my lairs. I am most impressed."
Illyana and Peter glanced nervously at Strange. All of them felt the tremendous menace that flowed from the passive man on the dais, even though there was no overt threat or obvious reason to feel the creeping fear that seeped through their guts.
Strange knew why.
His jaw was set. He felt the evil of the creature before him, recognized the full stink that left only whiffs of itself at the back end of too many plots. This monster had worked himself into the background so thoroughly he was simply a part of the world.
"Let us speak awhile," the creature on the throne said with a sadistic smile.
xXx
"Okay, dis is stoopid," Remy growled as he kicked at the gravel on the shoulder of the two lane road. The five hooded and cowled ninja stood in the morning sunlight of the abandoned strip, their van parked behind them. All around there was nothing but road, fencing, and cornfields. "We been driving up and down dis stretch of road for close to twenty minute, not find a ting. Why we parking here?"
Elektra stood on the shoulder of the road, her fists planted on her hips, staring at the field intently. She sensed through her link with Illyana. "Here," she murmured. "Illyana is through here. Help me, Stick."
"Down that road?" Stick asked.
"Dere is no road," Remy snapped.
"Ah," Stick said. "A road that I can see that you can't. We're on the right track."
Without even meaning to, Illyana had led the ninja to the orphanage. They closed their eyes, followed Stick, and vanished into a cornfield.
Time passed uncounted, then Stick stopped. The others stopped as well, opening their eyes. A strange wind blew across them, steady and unceasing and chill. Stick turned to the others.
"This is what you were trained for," he said simply. "You may die here. This is the one I have prepared you to kill. Give it everything you have; if ever in your lives there was a time to hold nothing back, this is it. Do not mind dying; you may succeed where no one yet has. Are you with me?"
They nodded, and so did he. "Good," he said. "Let's go."