Author's Note: We are still 7 Years in the past. Thank you for your reviews and favs.
Darius stood outside of a abandoned apartment complex in England, feeling the emotions of various children running around and playing in the inside of the decrepit place, but beyond that was something impassioned with darkness and pulsating. Something that mocked the life force that gave birth to him. He exhaled. "Dark times indeed."
The rapid clinking of heels against concrete broke Darius from his musings. Darius looked to his right at the curvy figure of a woman wearing a black cloak, hood, and red heels. Her perfect red manicured nails tapped a rhythm against her swaying hips as she stopped beside him and stared up at the building.
"How could you lie to her with such ease?" The woman asked, her soft voice not hinting at an emotion other than intrigue.
Darius held out his arm, waiting for the disguised woman to wrap her arm around his, when she did, he teleported them both into a cabin in the middle of the snow covered woods. When Darius waved his hand again, various candles around the cabin lit and illuminated the once finely decorated yet dusty home. The cabin looked as if it hadn't been lived in for decades. Spiderwebs and dust blanketed the entirety of the cabin, causing the woman to let out a sound of displeasure. Darius waved his hand, restoring the cabin to its once glorious form.
"Please sit." Darius escorted the woman to the white coach and held out a hand to take her cloak, to which she refused by holding up a dainty hand of her own. Darius sat across from her on a matching white coach. He crossed his legs. "Pricilla, let us forgo anymore formalities. Neither of us acquire it."
"Yes. I suppose we do not, Ironman and his friends will be here in thirty minutes. They would be here sooner, but the Asgardian will keep him occupied with questions of the girl's whereabouts."
Darius frowned. "The girl? She has a name."
"Don't you think I know that!" The woman yelled, loosing her composure. "I try not to remember. I keep starting over, trying to forget I ever knew her." Pricilla threw off her hood to reveal shoulder length curled blonde hair. Dark circles framed her calculating brown eyes, and her red painted lips seemed to be sealed in a permanent frown.
"You should have never forced her to go." Pricilla said.
"Manipulating Darcy was the only option, she carries too much of your stubbornness!" Darius yelled, knowing that Pricilla was not upset that he sent Darcy off world, it was the fact that he manipulated her; which amused him to no end, because she had done the same.
Pricilla's eyes glowed white. "If I-."
"You don't have the power to fight me." Darius said.
"Power?" Pricilla asked in disbelief. "No one has any power. Everyone's fate is set in stone. You are an insecure fool to believe that being male in a world that caters to men gives you anymore power than you would have had, had you never left where you came from. I don't want to fight you, I know I wouldn't win. I only want one thing, and that is to fulfill a prophesy I spent my entire life knowing I'd be the catalyst of. I don't care who I have to put up with, or who I have to sacrifice. The girl would have went without manipulation."
Darius massaged at his temples, while sighing tiredly. "You choose to serve me. To be my link to the outside world while I was detained, to make me aware of my enemy's locations. You chose. Do not behave as if I am the villain here." Darius said.
Pricilla cocked her head to the side while frowning deeper as her white glowing eyes studied Darius. "Aren't you? Along with every Dresleim that has ever set foot on Earth. The men of your world introduced the mutant gene into humanity. I could have had a normal life."
Darius chuckled without mirth, while looking at Pricilla w. She had always chose to fulfill her duty regardless of who found themselves in her way. He at least admitted to loving all of his descendants. He loved Darcy, perhaps more than even his grandson, because she reminded him so much of his beloved Yvette. Pricilla refused to speak her own daughter's name, or acknowledge any feelings of love or attachment to her.
It was unfortunate that Darcy was the first of his descendants to possess the queen gene. Her life had been planned before her conception, and he would not alter her path. "Normalcy will be the death of the weak. My kind have done you and all of humanity a blessing. Count yourself honored to be called Mutant once the reaping begins." Darius said wanting Pricilla to believe the lie, he stood and walked around the coffee table to stare down at her. Pricilla's white eyes dulled back to their calculating brown. Pricilla stared at his hand, while digging into the fabric of her cloak with her nails. The disgust radiating off of her filled his senses. It was one of the emotions humans and non-humans emitted that he did not care for, it reminded him too much of Dresleim and his sex.
"We require a host." Darius said staring at Pricilla's blonde hair while bringing his offered hand back to his side.
"The Astrophysicist Jane Foster, carries the Darkness to Asgard, Alice and I will lower her to the Darkness and the rest will fall into place as it is meant to. You need to teleport to different parts of the world every fifteen minutes for two hours." Pricilla eyes glowed white.
"And what of the man of Iron?" Darius asked trailing his eyes from Pricilla's hair to her eyes.
"He, along with Captain America, Black Widow, Hawk Eye and Shield will have their own problems to deal with soon. Thor will bring Jane, once she is infected, to Asgard." Pricilla stood up looking past Darius at a wooden wall, and Darius knew that the woman was trapped in her mind for the time being, reviewing a prophesy that only seers could see. He studied her face closely. She didn't look a day over 35 and yet he knew that she had lived far more years than her appearance would suggest, such was the fate of seers. To watch people die and live a normal life span, while you yourself outlive them. He had known Pricilla's mother on his home world, she too had been a seer…she had been different from all of the women of his world…she had helped him escape death. She had known the prophecy before her daughter developed her sight.
Flashback
Darius laid naked and covered in burns and dried blood, staring up at the brown cave ceiling of his abode. Light from their moons illuminated the cave revealing nothing but the lone cave occupant and a puddle of blood gathered around him. He had spoken out of turn to his queen and goddess and he would be put to death for it. The words that he had uttered to his queen repeated in his mind. "We were birthed from the same womb what makes you better than I? Perhaps you and your sex are the inferior ones! It is you not I that belongs in rags" and he had spat at his queen's feet and sealed his fate to torture and death.
Darius closed his eyes as a spike of pain shot up the shattered length of his right leg. He laid in pain for what felt like sun cycles before he felt another presence within his cave, standing above him.
"My dearest fool." Came the raspy voice of one of one-hundred of Dresleim seers. Ank was one of the weakest seers of Dresleim, she could only see fates when paired with another seer, which gained her motherly adoration from the rest of her kind, for they viewed her as infantile regardless of her physical maturation. She did not hate males, nor view them as beneath her; yet she was not punished because her compassion for those of his sex came across as mere naivety.
Darius opened his eyes to be met with the vision of Ank dressed in a sheer red robe, her pregnant belly looking as if it was moments away from bursting. Her black hair covered in blue flames tumbled down her back in long braids, and she stared down at him with one hand on her belly and tears in her red eyes. When she attempted to kneel beside him she wobbled, causing him to attempt to sit up to stabilize her.
"I am fine." Ank said, letting out a large exhale as she made it on the ground to sit beside him, in the pool of his blood.
"You have soiled your wings with my blood."
"We are Dresleim, is your blood not my own? Is your pain not my pain?" Ank asked placing a warm black hand on his cheek, and letting the red garb transform on her body to large red wings of flame.
Tears slipped from Darius's eyes, his body shocked by a touch that did not precede pain.
"I had a vision today." Ank said, moving to lay beside Darius, she wrapped her arms and wings around him, touching her forehead to his, and he felt such bliss that he sobbed.
"The grand seer, ordered us to look at the worlds carrying our exiled kind, she wanted to see their fates. I was paired with Amj, and we saw a world ruled by man, with strange beings. Some were capable of great feats and others not. The great ones it has been seen, carry part of us. Males from our home partook of the women of that strange world and produced offspring capable of great feats. Amj was not pleased with such a world, it stands against our laws and values; thus she broke from the bell before our sight was sated."
"You could have died." Darius rasped out.
"I did not. Separated from Amj. I connected to the source alone, without being paired. The source sent me back to gaze upon that world ruled by men. They produce our food in abundance, it has been their emotions that has sustained us. They have been calling out to us; which is why when those in exile seek a home they seek Earth. That is what it is called. The bell showed me a woman and you were paired with her, and I knew your fate in that moment and the fate of their world and ours. I was given a prophesy, if it is seen to fruition your sex will suffer no more."
Darius clenched his eyes closed tightly, desperately clinging to Ank's words, yet wondering at their truth.
"I do not believe you to be naive nor a fool. Why do you care for wretches?" Darius asked bitterly.
"I love."
"Love?" Darius asked confused by the unknown word.
"It is a word used by some groupings of Earthlings. It exists in many forms. Some forms are that of a pair between mother and child, the other that of a Dresleim and their queen." Ank pressed her red lips to Darius's cheek, her tears mixed with his.
"While paired I have seen various lifeforms and their fates, I have seen worlds where pain is unknown. None hurt, none suffer. A separation based on abilities or sex is unknown. If worlds such as those can exist out there, why can we not carve such a world here? I am fortunate to carry a daughter, but someday I will carry a son and he will be treated as you and all males are, and it will break me." Ank sobbed loudly. "I love my dearest fool, and to have the objects of my love broken, shall be the death of me."
Darius felt the force of Ank's emotions and believed in her sincerity. She believed him to be noble, and that thought alone swore him to her.
"What must I do to bring such a world to fruition?" Darius asked.
"Humble yourself before our queen and beg for exile, and when lead to the stones of transport you a force will grip you, let it guide you. Fate will guide you to Yvette, for when you pair with her as a woman pairs with a breeder here, it will unblock your powers and begin the prophesy. Yvette is capable of great feats."
"Must I know so little?" Darius asked.
Ank tightened her embrace around Darius. "The bell allowed me to see as little as I have shared with you. My vision began and ended with Yvette smiling at you, and you smiling at her-"
Darius frowned deeply. "How do you—"
"There was a golden light hallowing your union, and the sound of the bell tolling in your favor. It is a sign to seers that such a sight preempts greatness and the hearts desire. I know you have lost faith in my sex, but I promise you on my flame that you are the start of a new world where those like you will never—"
Darius stared at the ceiling. He had contemplated death as many times as he has exhaled breath, but he could never bring himself to become just another star in the sky. He despised the women of his world and their power, and yet he did not feel the same resentment for the woman that embraced him. He wanted to hate her, but he did not.
"What if this prophesy is for my happiness alone and our world remains unchanged?" Darius asked.
"Than I shall be happy that the bell has tolled in your favor, and you, a male of royal blood can find a world where your innate nobleness will not be punished."
Darius forced his eyes to look anywhere but directly in Ank's eyes.
"You are betraying our queen?" Darius asked.
Ank sighed, and silence settled between them for what felt like twelve paces of sand.
"I saw my mother form with the cosmos, she became the vast star between Clemidale's heart and Glatius's spear. I have always believed that once I join her, we will form the shield that protected Clemidale's heart in the tales of yore."
"So you plan to forfeit your life?" Darius asked shocked at Ank's calmness.
"Our people cannot hide what slumbers in our hearts from one another. I will save you and I will be condemned, that too is prophesy; however I shall carry and birth a son before I am to join my mother."
At that, Darius used his arms to sit up, hissing through his pain. He brazenly met Ank's eyes and gripped her upper arms tightly. Ank seemed surprised at first but smiled calmly.
"Why? What am I to you? We merely met in passing on numerous occasions as you snuck into the male quarters to heal wounds." Darius demanded.
"When my son is born and of age, he will carry this one." Ank put her hand on her stomach. "His sister, off world to join you and she will help you where I cannot. My sight will become hers, the bell has told me of this truth. She will find you. Never tell her of her birth, let her believe she is of Earth. She will serve you."
Darius eyes searched Ank's. He could not feel any deceit pouring from her. "You speak of your daughter's assistance, what of your son?"
"He will die upon reaching the stone portal on Earth, his wounds will end him."
"I can save-"
"I have seen. You cannot."
END FLASHBACK
Darius shook himself from his memory, and stared down at Pricilla who looked up at him with a deep frown. He had always wondered why she didn't resemble her mother, and thought perhaps she had immediately took on the appearance of the first human that found her, subconsciously burying the majority of her innate Dresleim traits to conform to this world. Darius returned the woman's frown, needing to keep her at a distance to keep his promise to her mother. He understood, why Ank wanted her daughter to remain ignorant of her place in their world. Seer's off world, would always be welcomed back to Dresleim, even dragged back if their connection to the bell was profound; which Pricilla's was. He would repay her someday for her servitude with the truth of her birth, and an easy display of his affection for her, birthed by knowing and adoring her mother.