I would have liked to share what had happened with Victor, but I did not want to disturb him while he was spell-casting, or to be found coming out of a part of the castle I, as a supposedly new immigrant to Latveria, should not know about. So I did not go to the secret chamber where he was hard at work, but instead returned to my old room, where I changed my stained skirt, and very carefully removed the blood from the setting of my ring with a cotton swab.

As much as I disliked admitting that Valeria was right about anything at all, the fact was that emeralds were delicate, the most delicate of all the precious stones. My engagement ring was a source of worry to me, because my life was far too active—to say the least—and that the stone might crack and fall out of the ring was a far too likely possibility.

Plus, the stone was enormous. To my eye, it was more like a cocktail ring than an engagement ring. I wondered what the wedding ring which Victor had commissioned would be like, if it was plain, or elaborate—and, of course, what the inscription was.

I decided, as I pulled the ribbon from the neck of a blouse, threaded the ring on it, and hung it around my neck, that I would wear only my wedding band, once I had a wedding band... I would say that my wedding ring had greater significance to me, it was overshadowed by the emerald, and that it had a much more personal meaning. Then I would see about having the emerald ring made into a pendant. It was certainly large enough.

I got my calligraphy supplies together, including my collapsible artist's desk, and went back down to the Great Hall, where there would be good light for most of the day, from one direction or another. As I borrowed a chair and set up my workstation, the Fearsome Four passed through, Doctor Doom with a look on his face like the wrath of God, a storm about to break, the Invincible Woman and the Inhuman Torch looking like they were ready to chew roofing nails through in their fury and frustration, and the It trailing behind like a whipped dog.

"The dimensional portal should take us…" I heard the impostor say as he passed my desk. He paused for a moment to shoot me a glance, "to a place where Magneto's powers will not work—but ours will."

That was all I heard. It was enough. I could guess the rest. He meant to lure the mutant leader there, and either kill him, or leave him stranded. It wasn't a bad plan, exactly—just one that was…doomed to failure. In this version of reality, the pretender and his family were not the heroes, not in any way, shape or form. The Laws of Heroics worked against them. The hero must always win. He may be killed doing it, but he must win.

It did mean that Magneto would probably be coming here soon. I wondered if he would remember me in this reality.

I clipped a piece of paper to my desk, uncorked a bottle of ink, took out my finest-nib glass pen, and began the tale of The Death of Koschei the Deathless.

'Once upon a time there was a Prince Ivan who had three beautiful sisters'…" I wrote, in a nice round uncial script, leaving plenty of room around the 'O' to go back and add an illumination later. I put down how he married his sisters off to three powerful shape changers—one who could turn himself into a falcon, another who could become an eagle, and the last who could take the form of a raven. Rather like superheroes, or mutants…

There had always been tales of people who could do such things—but recorded history was scarce of factual accounts. Until the twentieth century, that is. Then there was an explosion.

Strictly speaking, the 'mutants' weren't mutants as Charles Darwin theorized them. There was nothing natural about their development or evolution. The adaptation gene that meant some people developed powers in response to a high dose of radiation, such as that which turned the Fantastic Four into something approaching gods, was the same gene which produced mutants. It was also called the metamorphosis gene, or the meta-gene, and those who gained their powers later in life, meta-humans.

It was spliced into the human genome back before there was written history, by someone—several persons who could time-travel had claimed credit—Mister Sinister, Apokolips, among them. Nathaniel Richards, Reed Richard's 'old nutter' of a father, probably claimed it as well. Whoever it was had grabbed an individual or two in communities all over the globe, done some genetic surgery, and popped him/her back down into the gene pool. Several thousand years went by, in which the meta-gene lay dormant in its carriers—until and unless they were exposed to sufficient radiation.

Then it became active. And instead of dying fast of radiation poisoning, or slow of cancer, people changed.

Every single one of the people who went through the cosmic storm with Reed Richards had possessed that gene. What were the odds against that?

A million to one? More? Million to one chances cropped up nine times out of ten. And they always worked.

Steven Rogers, the 4F reject of World War Two, had volunteered to be injected with 'Super Soldier Serum' in a secret U.S. government program to produce a super-powered army. It had worked, and he became Captain America. He had the gene. What he did not know—but what I had discovered while I was finding out why Reed Richards inventions were not being put into production, was that he wasn't the first one on whom it had been tested. He was just the first one on whom it had worked. There was a secret graveyard of would-be heroes. It would destroy him to find that out, but I hadn't even considered going to his arch-enemy, the Red Skull, because I could not stand the thought of working for a white supremacist and former Nazi.

Like the gene for sickle-cell anemia, having one copy of which bestowed a natural resistance to malaria, and having two inflicted a disease, having two copies of the meta-gene made a difference. That was what made a person a mutant. There was sufficient 'background' radiation now to induce changes at conception. Most mutants were as normal-looking and seeming as anyone else—until puberty hit, and they began to develop in lots of unexpected ways. They came into their powers, and some of them changed drastically in their appearance. By that time, though, they were old enough, big enough to defend themselves.

Most of them were normal looking and normal seeming at birth—but not all of them. That was the tragedy. Some mutant infants were born with terrible abnormalities, deformities—and with features that made it clear they were not ordinary birth defects.

Such babies didn't tend to live for very long. I remembered the baby that was born in the same hospital where my grandmother died. I had heard the nurses whispering about it, and I went to see it, curious about what a mutant looked like.

This one had a greenish peach fuzz all over its body—and no eyes, not even empty eye sockets—just a smooth featureless head until its little nostrils and slit of a mouth. The next time I visited, it was dead—a natural crib death, they said. It just stopped breathing, they said. Even then I wondered if someone had quietly helped Death by putting a hand over its face…

I dipped my pen again, and wrote 'Prince Ivan lived alone in his castle for a whole year after his sisters married, until he was both bored and lonely enough to go and visit them. He ordered his magnificent white horse saddled, and set off…"

I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed doing calligraphy. I had been too busy to keep up with it after college, but, if everything went as it ought to, doing calligraphy was a low-impact activity a pregnant woman might pursue. I wondered if Victor, like the impostor, remembered the stories Cynthia told him when he was little. A book of tales, remembered by Victor, written down by me—that would be a wonderful thing to read to a little one at bedtime.

That fuzzy baby in the hospital never got to be old enough to be read to.

One of my many grievances against the two men who purported to be the 'leaders' of the mutants—Professor Xavier and Magneto—was that neither took much of an interest in mutants until they were old enough and big enough to be costumed adventurers. There should be a rescue system in place to remove obvious mutant infants to safe, loving homes, rather than leaving them to the mercies of state-run care, or to abandonment and death.

What mutant-kind needed, other than for Magneto to keep his mouth shut, as his every pronouncement was a species relations disaster, and for Professor Xavier to stop teaching, because all he turned out of his school was one unhappy angst-ridden superhero after another, was a leader. A real leader, one who could not only inspire with words, but lead by example.

Someone who would stand up and say, 'We as a people need to stop waging war, and start earning wages, and we need to do it now. We need to stop being costumed adventurers, and instead become citizens. We don't need people who are willing to die for the mutant cause, we need those who are strong enough to live for it—every day, every single day of a long and useful life.'

Mutant-kind needed that sort of leader, but whoever it was, it wasn't going to be me. I could see what was needed, but I wasn't a mutant, for one thing, and for another, I had too much on my plate already. Being Lady Doom was at least two full time jobs, plus overtime into the bargain.

But it came with such excellent benefits! They were really, really amazing….Thinking about Victor put a smile on my face, as my pen ran dry. I dipped it again, and wrote:

'Ivan rode and rode, until he came to a field where a mighty battle had taken place, but all the soldiers who lay dead wore but one uniform. The prince cried out "Who slew this entire army? This was a mighty feat indeed!" One living man replied, "It was the warrior maiden Marya Morevna, who is as beautiful as the most beautiful of women and as valorous as the most valorous of men." "I would meet this maiden." said Prince Ivan.'

While I was writing that, I observed the return of the Fearsome Four, in a better mood than they were when they left. This time, the impostor did not glance my way, but went off in the direction of the communication room.

I continued writing. Ivan and the warrior maiden Marya Morevna meet, fall in love, and are married. She carries him off to her own realm (that was why I liked this fairy tale so much. Marya Morevna was her own woman!) She gave him the keys to the castle, and one day, after an extended honeymoon, she decides to go warring again. Before she left, she told him to watch over every thing, but not to go into that closet…

Laws of Heroics in action—of course he does, and finds that his wife has this skinny old guy—Koschei the Deathless, a very powerful and evil wizard chained up to the wall with twelve strong chains. He's been there ten years without food or water, so he begs Ivan for a drink. Ivan is more compassionate than he is smart. Once Koschei has drunk his fill, his powers and strength are restored. He breaks the chains and, laughing at Ivan, flies off to take Marya captive.

At that point the formerly powerful and strong Marya Morevna takes a turn for the worse. I blamed the Laws of Heroics for that one. She can't rescue herself, for some reason, so Ivan has to do it. It takes him a while…

As I continued the story, I thought more about this reality which Victor and I found ourselves in. It had seemed to be pro-mutant, on the surface, but what it really was, was pro-Magneto. I had noticed that the night before. This reality had been designed for him. This poor imitation of Doom was who he was for a reason…

Magneto and Victor had been foes for years. Not as Reed Richards was—Victor and he were equally matched—but still foes. The difference was that every time Magneto went up against Victor—he lost. The events of the other day, when Victor not only rescued me but committed himself to bailing Genosha out of its difficulties—was only the latest altercation between the two. Victor was so far ahead of him—and all the other 'super-villains' of our reality—that he even sometimes gave Magneto the advantage, like spotting him a pawn at chess, so to speak.

Surely that must gall Magneto. Surely he must long to get the better of Victor, just once—and in this reality he could do that. He could defeat this 'Doctor Doom' with one hand tied behind his back—and that was just what was going to happen.

Someone had made these changes in reality expressly for the purpose of giving Magneto what he always wanted.

I wondered who could love him that much—not wisely, but too well. I didn't know enough about him to guess at that.

Someone loved Magneto, and that someone wasn't very wise. Giving people what they want doesn't make them happy, and often isn't good for them—witness this version of Kristoff and Valeria. Once you get what you want, you start wanting other things. Human beings are endless want-generators. If that person who loved Magneto was at all wise, he/she would have worked out whatever it was Magneto needed, and given him that.

I paused, and changed sheets of paper. What did Magneto need? My first thought was 'He needs a woman to look after him.', but that was flippant. Anyway, what woman in her right mind would have him?

What woman in her right mind would have Doctor Doom? Well, it was established that I might potentially be schizophrenic, so I wasn't necessarily in my right mind, but, what woman who knew what I knew about him WOULDN'T have him? And fight to keep him, if need be.

Magneto, the Holocaust survivor and mutant, needed to know that mutant-kind wasn't going to end up in the gas chambers. He needed to know he had helped to achieve that goal, that he had accomplished something with his life. He needed to know that his grandchildren would be safe, and that their grandchildren would be, too.

Speaking of whom—Magneto, his family, and several of his people were even now entering the Great Hall of Castle Doom…