xXx
The Swordbearer, Illyana, dropped on the shore of the lake to see the Beast struggling in the surface, trying to escape the Deep Portal.
"You shall never pass into my realm again while I have the power to prevent it," snarled the Swordbearer. She hurled her Soulsword, and it arced then lashed down out of the sky with a rolling crash like thunder, smashing the Beast down through the portal and sealing the lake with a thick layer of mystic ice.
The Swordbearer staggered, then collapsed at the edge of the sealed lake, senseless.
xXx
Lock struggled to open her eyes. She saw Silent crouched over her, tossing away a syringe.
"We won?" she managed.
"Drink this," Silent said, her voice curt. She offered a curled leaf with a foul liquid on it. "For the rest of the poisons."
Lock managed to choke it down, then she struggled to sit up. She was bandaged in the dark cloth of the ninja's clothing, and another set of clothes was over her bandages. There were plenty of corpses willing to part with their gear. Silent glanced around and sniffed.
Xavier lay unmoving, and Lock couldn't immediately tell if he was dead or alive. Valeria was on her hands and knees, swaying as her exhausted body and spirit and mind trembled.
"I don't… know how to thank you…" Lock managed, smiling at Silent.
"Don't," Silent said with a shrug. "We both needed the Jonin dead. You captured his attention. You led me to the two keys and you did your part to stop the Beast." Her serious eyes lightened a shade. "Jonin dead. Beast banished. Hand scattered." Silent nodded to herself. "Job well done."
Silent stood, turned her back on the carnage, and took ten steps toward freedom. She was gone.
"I think that's your old woman from the market," Lock managed, her voice shaky.
"What… what just happened?" Valeria choked out.
"You're better off not knowing," Lock shrugged. "You can trust me on that or I can lay it out for you in all the detail I know."
"I think you're right," Valeria managed. "I don't really think I want to know. I've never felt evil like that before."
"Hopefully you never will again," Lock said quietly. She struggled to turn. "Xavier," she said, cupping her hand around the side of his face. "Xavier, are you alive?"
Lock quickly checked his vitals. "He's in a coma," she murmured. "These can't be helping." She carefully removed the needles. Then she started rubbing at the painted sigils on his flesh.
"We have no time for this," Valeria said, forcing herself to her feet. "Some of the ninja escaped. They will return soon. We are in no condition to face them."
Lock forced herself to her feet. "I'm not sure where I can take Xavier. He is out of safehouses."
Valeria touched his forehead tenderly. "I wish we could have met," she echoed softly, looking at his glazed and empty eyes. "I will take him and keep him safe. Do you think he will recover?"
"I don't know," Lock said honestly. "I don't know what happened there. I think he gave you everything he had, keeping nothing back. His mind is driven so far out of his body…" she shrugged. "I don't know."
Valeria nodded curtly. "I cannot thank you enough. You saved me, us, the world. Without you," she said, and there were no words to follow.
Lock smiled faintly and touched Xavier's head in parting. "His name is Charles Xavier," she told Valeria. Then she turned and walked away. She did not look back.
Valeria picked Xavier up as though he weighed nothing. "Well, Charles Xavier," she said, "let's get you to a place where we can wash those nasty sigils off."
Then the concrete building was empty except for flies and carnage and a smudged chalk circle.
xXx
Lock stood on the bridge with the other tourists, looking down into the river. "So what's the moral?" she asked herself softly. She pulled the bill on her ball cap down a little further over her bruised eyes. She watched the light dance on the shifting surface of the water as it flowed below.
"Morals are for those who live," she murmured. "Could it be that the cruelest of men may have their moment of greatness? Or perhaps no matter what sacrifice they make for a good cause, evil men always get punished?" She sighed, her body a pulsing mass of pain. "At least this time it doesn't fall to me to find you a place," she whispered as tears jostled in her throat and behind her eyes. "This time, you earned your refuge."
She turned and walked away into the hot morning through a veil of tears. "Thank you," she whispered with the last of her voice, thinking back to a room beneath a snowy chateau. "Thank you for vindicating me."
She vanished into the crowd as though she had never been.
xXx
For a long moment Valeria stood on the steps to Strange's house, gazing up into the flaring heat of the sun. "I am your child," she whispered to the sun, and she felt the last traces of darkness burn away inside her. She half smiled. "Strange, Strange, you just can't leave your dimension for ten minutes." She shook her head and hefted Xavier, then entered the mansion.
Ten minutes later Xavier was laid out in the guest room, unclothed, a towel over his waist. Valeria had a wash bowl and a wash cloth. She began delicately dabbing at the peculiar gummy paint the ninja used to draw the sigils on his flesh. "There's no call for these to be on you a moment longer," she murmured grimly to herself.
She heard the familiar sound of the stepping disk in the hallway. Illyana, pale and drawn, stumbled in and sat on a chair by Xavier. For a few minutes, she sat and watched as Valeria carefully wiped at the runes, smearing and then removing them. Then Illyana picked up a washcloth and dipped it in the bowl. She began dabbing Xavier's scalp, which was particularly crusted with the painted sigils.
"I've been thinking," Illyana said, her voice strained. Valeria continued her work without looking up. "I've been thinking about my future. About what we're doing here."
For a few more minutes they continued washing Xavier. Illyana cleared her throat.
"I never want to be… I want no part of that," she managed in a slightly shaky voice. "Evil, real evil is not pretty. I thought…" she stopped, cleared her throat, and wrung out her cloth. "I see that more clearly now."
"It has a taste all its own," Valeria said softly. Illyana met her eyes for the first time.
"Yes," Illyana said. "Yes. I think… I think I'm ready to trust Strange now. I will never be the Queen of Hell. There is a lot out there more evil than I will ever be. I just… I just never saw that before."
Valeria quickly looked down so Illyana would not see the tears in her eyes. She nodded.
They continued washing Xavier.
"So what do you think Strange will want us to do with him?" Illyana asked, nodding at Xavier.
"I have no idea," Valeria said, "though I can't imagine he'll object to us offering him refuge. Not after… after what Xavier here did." She almost laughed. "I'm content to let Strange be the one with the answers," she added.
"I am too," Illyana said, a new determination in the set of her features. "I think I'm ready to learn a better way."
"You'll be a hero yet," Valeria said, and that's all she could trust her voice to say.
Illyana smiled a bit forlornly. "Thank you… thank you for believing in me."
Valeria's eyes were brimming with tears as she looked up. "Thank you for making me right."
Outside, the sun began to set on the hottest day of the year.
xXx
"I'm staying here for the night," Valeria said as they finished eating sandwiches in the kitchen of Strange's house.
"Me too," Illyana nodded. She shivered. "Not quite ready to go back to the apartment. Brr." Illyana went upstairs shortly afterward, and Valeria put away the remains of the meal. She headed upstairs, and hesitated at the top of the steps.
"Just like old times," she said, touching the banister and remembering her confusion when she first arrived in this place. She shook her head, but decided to check on Strange's room before going to bed herself. Perhaps in looking at his space she could feel a bit closer to him. Right now that would be a comfort.
She opened the door, and gasped.
Strange lay unconscious on the floor by the bed.
"Doctor Strange," Valeria said, kneeling by him. Then she was up—kitchen—water—steps—back in one monumental gust of wind that whirled around the inside of the house like a pent-up ferret. She propped him up on her knee and fed him a sip of water.
He revived with a bit of a groan, blinked once. Valeria was appalled to see that the whites of his eyes were flaring red. It was a most unsettling effect.
"Valeria," he managed. "Good to see you again. I think I need some sleep." His head lolled to the side, and he was unconscious again. She hefted him and put him on his bed.
"Nothing that can't wait until tomorrow, Strange," she murmured, and she turned off the light.
xXx
He listened attentively to the entirety of the story the two young women presented, asking questions from time to time. It gave him much to think about.
"So it never fully manifested," Strange said.
"It never fully gained control over me," Valeria said with a nod. "If it had…" and words failed her. Strange sat back, nodding thoughtfully, matching up his clues and riddles.
'What did you find out?" Valeria asked.
"Well," Strange said slowly, clasping his slender hands together, "it sounds like this might be the threat I sensed. The Beast was well prepared to end life on this dimension one way or another. The ninja were already in this world, a part of it, and arranged to bring him through. Both the ninja and their Beast 'dwell in darkness.'"
"But," Valeria prodded.
Strange sat with a distant look in his eye for a moment. Then he shook himself slightly. "As Sorcerer Supreme you develop a keen sense of paranoia," he said with an apologetic smile. "Seems like that's the end of it."
"It will be if you help me seal that thing out of my dimension," Illyana said in a small voice.
"I will," Strange said. "But first… first I will see to Xavier. He sounds like a remarkable fellow."
"Would it be alright if we move back in for a few days? Until the dust settles?" Valeria asked with a glance at Illyana, who nodded.
"That would be fine," Strange said. "You can go and get what you'll need from the apartment. I'll tend to Xavier."
They went their separate ways. Strange quietly entered the room where Xavier lay senseless.
Strange sat by him, touched his face in four places, murmured to himself tones that would call to the lost. He closed his eyes and slipped his senses into the dark emptiness of Xavier's mind.
No one home. No forwarding address.
Strange sent a call out into the darkness. There were no barriers to reflect it.
Xavier would return when he was ready to find his way back. Strange nodded to himself. Then, for a long moment, he sat watching Xavier.
"Should have been me," he said softly. He clasped the senseless body's hand. "This burden should not have come to you." For a moment, the three days of sleep that Strange needed swirled up around him and made him dizzy, made the weight he bore shift and sway over him with its crushing mass. He was the defender of this dimension. "No," he whispered, closing his eyes. "My choice was correct and unlucky." He looked down at Xavier for another long moment. "Let us both hope the threat is ended," he murmured.
"Until you return," he said, and he began to cast his spell.
xXx
The Swordbearer and the Sorcerer Supreme stood by the edge of the gummy, cracked, foul ice over the Deep Portal. In the center of the ice block was a shining sword. The Swordbearer stamped her dainty hoof on the stone, and it chipped.
"I'm not sure this would hold much longer," she said quietly.
"It won't have to," Strange said, his eyes hard. He gestured, and the Soulsword tore up out of the ice and whirled through the air, ringing down into stone and swaying upright. The ice shattered—
Strange closed his hand into a fist, and the creature below the ice was halted.
"You no longer face mentalists and apprentices," Strange hissed in a language best left forgotten, one the Beast could not misunderstand. "You are not welcome here."
The stone began to ripple and creep towards the center of the lake, leaving concentric circles like the rings in a tree's flesh. The stone buckled and heaved as the creature below fought to enter the underspace to engage in real battle.
One impossibly long taloned appendage whipped clear. Strange hissed, narrowing his eyes, and gore exploded from the limb as its bone center grew rotating bone spurs, shredding flesh and mangling the arm. Strange gestured, and the arm shattered and was rammed down into the gap. The Deep Portal was sealed, the Beast driven back into the outer darkness. Strange turned to face his apprentice, his eyes bright and sweat beading on his face.
"He could not have found you unaided," Strange said.
"Sym," the Swordbearer said, her eyes cold. "He betrayed me."
"Do you want me to deal with him as well?" Strange asked.
"No," the Swordbearer said, shaking her head. "The Beast can be forgiven. I was none of his business. But my own demon…" She gritted her teeth. "I need to review the command structure with him. It's best if they associate rulership with me directly, no offense."
"None taken," Strange said with a shrug. "If you'll excuse me, I have about three days of sleep waiting for me."
"Thank you, Master," she said, every word sincere. She pulled her Soulsword from the stone and looked along its edge. There was a tint to the metal now, and the edge seemed sharper than ever. "I don't know how much longer I could have held that creature back."
He smiled at her briefly, and was gone.
The Swordbearer walked slowly out on the rings of stone where the Deep Portal once was. She glanced around, then buried the point of her Soulsword in the stone and rubbed her hands together. She focused, concentrated, sensed.
Sweat rolled down her face as she used a part of her magic that was new and alien to her. But after time, she dared to open her eyes.
In the center of the rings rose a single dandelion. In a deliberate motion, it opened up, its yellow a stark contrast to the barren stone around it.
"It's a start," the Swordbearer said with a smile.
xXx
Valeria effortlessly carried the seven foot block of crystal down the hall into the Sanctum Sanctorum. She put it on the stand by the far wall as Strange had instructed her to. Then she stepped back and looked at Xavier, embedded in the crystal, protected until he began to awaken of his own accord.
"Sleep well," she said, touching the crystal. "Dream only of pure things."
"Purely good things," Strange said from the doorway behind her. He joined her by the crystal. "He will not age, nor be possessed, nor suffer any harm until he awakens," Strange said. He nodded to himself. "This will have to do until he's ready to return under his own power."
"Did you try to bring him back?" Valeria said.
"I've done that before," Strange said with a shrug. "Chased down those driven from their bodies and restored them. Until they choose to return, however, there's an empty space in them that can never be filled." He sighed. "Better that Xavier find his own way back."
"Sounds almost like the voice of experience," Valeria said, looking at him directly.
"It does, doesn't it," Strange said with a faint smile. "All of us need to find our way back one way or another. We all leave when it gets to be too much," he said, touching the crystal and looking at the peacefully sleeping body within. "There's no shame in that. I pity those who never find their balance again."
Valeria watched him steadily for a moment. "Get some rest, Doctor," she said.
He smiled. "Good advice," he said. "I'll see you again when I wake up. D'you suppose there's a Planetary article in all this?" he asked.
"How about one on mind over matter techniques and stealth technology developed hundreds of years ago?" Valeria said dryly.
"Just as soon as I find someone to write it," Strange smiled.
"I met a woman named Lock who might be able to help you," Valeria said.
With a click, the Sanctum Sanctorum sealed behind them, protecting everything within.
