The woman once known as Rogue considered the adopted daughter of the woman called Mystique, once the lover of a man called Gambit stalked back and forth before the unoccupied throne. The room she paced was the length of two football fields, one end marked by a pair of huge doors. The other end was dominated by the enormous throne that Rogue stopped to look at every few minutes.
"Be still, War," said the Chancellor sitting at the foot of the throne, his face a picture of composition. "He will return when he has his objective."
"I don't see why I couldn't have just gone and collected her myself."
"Hush," hissed the Chancellor opening his eyes for the first time in hours to look at her through purple eyes with slit pupils. "The Master is infallible and if he did not deem you capable, who are you to question?"
Chastised, the Rogue stopped her pacing, looking at the far away doors as they were pushed open. Her skirt swirled at her ankles as she came to an abrupt stop. Instead of the Master Apocalypse, a servant entered the hall and scurried through the intervening space toward the two.
"Chancellor, the followers grow restless. They want to know why the Master has not come before them. They appear afraid."
"I will come to them then. I would not wish for them to displease him with their fears. He will see them all destroyed if they cannot believe in his absence." The Chancellor did not walk across the room following the servant, but rather floated, his toes inches from the floor.
The doors shut with a sound that vibrated down the room toward the woman now called War.
Lenneth laid her hand on Nathan's forehead, feeling without pressing the fever coursing through his body. He had not awakened that morning when she did, instead languishing abed, unconscious as she tended to him. Her lips pursed involuntarily with worry. Already his hair had lost its darkness, its luster, turning a matte white. His cheeks had sunken in during the night. No matter how she looked at him, she could hardly see the vibrant, if sadistic, man who had been her companion just days earlier.
"Oh, Nathan," she murmured to he empty room. "What am I going to do?" She left Nathan in their bed heading downstairs to her laboratory. As she passed a couple of her servants in the hallway, she told them to make him as comfortable as they could and that she was absolutely not to be disturbed.
The lab was quiet save for the hum of the air conditioning system; so quiet she could hear her heart beating far too fast. There were tears in her eyes, tears she didn't want to shed, not all over the spotless floor of her workspace. Besides, she simply didn't have the time necessary to waste on such sentimental foolishness. If she was going to save him, she was going to have to work far more quickly.
"What is this I hear," thundered the Chancellor from his perch high above the assembled in the much smaller space of the assembly hall. "I hear dissension among the believers, dissension against the Master?"
There was a slight murmur of dissent, but it certainly didn't have the strength that it should have had if such dissension was not present.
"Know you not what his rage can do to those who stand against him? You are his believers, his chosen, yet I feel fear in you." The empathic abilities of the Chancellor were well known; it was one of the things that made him useful to Apocalypse, his ability to feel even the slightest touch of disagreement, dissension, or distrust from anyone he could see. "Fear cannot exist among his chosen. Only strength. If you wish to stand against him, you will be among those who are buried as all of the Master's enemies are buried." His thunderous voice carried and echoed back from the high walls. "Do you wish to be buried by the human scum or their barely adequate enemies who call themselves the Mutant Nation? You know that the Master will bury them both, make them little more than forgotten monuments standing in the sands. Tell me, do you wish to be buried?"
Several strong voices said, "No," but it was hardly the strong no that he should have heard from those who had given themselves to the cause of his Master.
"I ask you again: DO YOU WISH TO BE BURIED," screamed the Chancellor, purple veins appearing around his eyes, the mark of the Apocalypse upon him.
"NO," screamed back the assembled. Then the chant went up,
"Hail Lord Apocalypse!" The words bounced back and forth through the assembly hall. The words feed the frenzy among the Master's followers, just as it should have in the Chancellor's estimation. One thing that no one knew was how those frenzied meetings were created by the Chancellor's own internal frenzy feed by his need to please his Master.
War looked at the doors once again, listening absently to the sound of those who had dedicated their lives to the creature she now called Master. A smile flitted across her face as she swept her hair off her shoulder with one hand, accenting her soft jaw and cheek. Things would begin soon enough, but she couldn't help feeling just a touch of anticipation.
"You will not be able to save him without my help."
Lenneth went bolt straight at the sound of that voice speaking in her ear. She could feel him leaning over her shoulder, his breath on the side of her face. Turning away, she leapt out of her chair, nearly overturning the beakers she had been working with.
Apocalypse had chosen a familiar form for his visit, the form he had taken on their first meeting at Nathan's home in London all those years earlier. He was even wearing the style of that time, his suit properly pressed, shoes shined, and a walking cane in his hands. He pointed the stick at her, his smile all mockery.
"You know that I'm right."
"Nathan will be fine. I will take care of him. I always have."
"Yes, you've always been there for him," said Apocalypse quietly, seating himself in her vacated chair. "You have always stood by, waiting for him to feel devotion for you as you feel toward him. You've even made something a whore of yourself trying to get his attention."
Lenneth simply lifted her chin, though the barb had found its mark. Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she slowly licked her lips, giving herself a moment to think.
"Why are you here, Nur? Nathan betrayed you. What does it matter to you if he survives?"
"His survival is not my objective. Yours, however, is." Lenneth turned toward him so quickly that it took her hair a moment to settle on her shoulder.
"What?"
"I have no further interest in Nathaniel Essex, he has proven himself to be an unworthy creature. No longer worth my notice. His first loyalty is to himself and his fool's quest for knowledge that he can never truly obtain. You, however, have shown yourself both loyal and pragmatic. Making deals where they are necessary but never forgetting where your true allegiance lies. So I have come to offer you again, what I offered you once before."
"I can't!" she cut him.
"You can, but you won't," he corrected. "Because of him. He who left you to face the wrath of the world alone, let you rot in prison, despite the fact that he knew where you were." Apocalypse tapped the cane against the floor causing an unpleasant pinging sound against the metal.
"You asked me if I would leave him," she snapped in return. "I told you then what I am telling you now, I love Nathaniel Essex. I will never leave him, least of all for the likes of you, no matter what it is you think you offer me."
"I offer you his life." His words brought a cold end to her heated tirade. She stared at him with wide eyes. "He will die without my help. I will restore him to himself, return the powers the humans stole, but only if you honor me as your Master."
