- Location
- Colorado
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oooooh. That's an interesting way to handle it. I was assuming this was based on an alternate future May's powers rolled that could be acquired from the forge in an alternate order from this May.
Nothing Beside Remains
- Thread starter Lucifra
- Start date
- Superhero
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
- Pronouns
- She/They
Especially a firebird…
Half the fucking problem was that I had no clue how to parse the sensory input that came out of the Crest of Flames, and I felt time flexing around me as Morgan dragged me into an out-of-the-way corner in the subway.
Somehow, she was much less bothered by the addition, and while I could chalk that up to it being weaker in her than in me, there was more to it than that, but what exactly that factor was was beyond my ability to wrap my head around right now.
"Mom, focus," she said, pulling my head forwards and down to bump foreheads with her. "Breathe. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight, I'll count for you. One… Two… Three… Four…"
I felt my lungs expand, the vice feeling around my chest that would have had me hunting for my inhaler not enough to stop me from breathing with the cool sensation that the Speed Ring's healing brought with it. More than that, though, I could feel something else within me rising up alongside the magic of the ring, and once I was breathing steadily again, I tried to feel it out.
When I did manage to isolate the sensation, the first thing I really noticed was that it smelled like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. The longer I spent focusing on it, the more I got a feel for it, and after what was probably only a couple of minutes, I could actually get a feel for the energies that the Forge had granted me, the Crest of Flames, and while actual precise control over it was beyond me, I could feel how it interacted with time around me, sticking a pair of oars into the massive ocean that was time, and I could feel as it made me… more.
I could also feel how it was incomplete.
The Crest of Flames was an incredible source of power, at its peak, but this was… not that. It almost felt like half of it had been sliced away, cleaner than a good knife through butter, and even as it filled me up and made me more than just human, I could feel how it was a shadow of what it could- would- be.
"Okay," I said, shuddering as I felt time pressing in against me. "Okay, I think I can handle it now. Thanks, Morgan."
"Any time, Mom," she said, smiling. "Now, come on, I-"
Both of us froze as we felt… something radiate through time, the Crest of Flames flaring to protect us from the tremendous pressure that whatever it was that was happening was putting off.
Morgan's eyes narrowed. "That was… that was the fucking Phoenix! And I think something else came through time, or some time traveler made a big move too."
"What should we… what should we do about it?" I asked, fingering Castform's Friend Ball in my pocket.
"Find out what's going on, hopefully," said Morgan, brow furrowing as she turned around on the spot, muttering under her breath and making gestures with her hands that presumably would help her pinpoint the location easier.
After a moment, she turned to look at me. "Come on, let's go. I can't figure out which train to catch from out here."
I nodded, feeling more than a little nervous, and followed her through the turnstiles and into the subway station at large, where Morgan proceeded to turn around a couple of times before deciding on one train that was just now pulling into the station. "This one," she said, confidently, all but dragging me onto the train after the people rushed off.
I could feel my hands trembling with nerves, like I sometimes was after having to take my inhaler, and I turned to Morgan, who was as even-keeled as ever. "How do you-"
"Stay so calm?" She chuckled wryly. "Practice, and too many fucking Sentinels. Don't worry, we all get jittery before the first time we really go out looking for problems."
The Forge flared up, but thankfully didn't disgorge anything, and the two of us waited on the train in a somewhat tense silence until the door dinged open.
"This is our stop," said Morgan, striding off the train confidently, and I followed after a moment of surprise. Emerging into the sunlight, it looked like we were in a park, and it took a moment for me to recognize the place from all the pictures that got splashed everywhere.
"Why would a time traveler choose Central Park to start shit?" I asked, turning to Morgan.
She shrugged. "No idea. I certainly wouldn't if I had any other choice, but maybe there's someone in this-"
There was a sound like a cat being dragged down a chalkboard biting and hissing, and a woman in a cape and little else was hurled out of the center of the park, crashing into the ground in a massive plume of dirt. Evidently, she was tough enough to take it, though, and she leapt back into the park without even a second look.
"What the fuck," I hissed, Golden Dagger halfway out of its sheath under my jacket.
Morgan frowned, then turned to the side, seeing a woman with short red hair in an equally red maid outfit stumbling out of the forest. "Fuck, Rachel?"
The woman turned to us, pale face looking almost waxy as she pressed one blood-covered hand to her stomach, which was sluggishly leaking blood.
"Morgan? I thought you were… I thought you died," she said, slumping forwards and swaying dizzily before forcing herself upright. "The Nimrod units… the Goblin Queen…"
"Nah, Rachel," said Morgan, walking towards the bloodied and battered woman with both hands held out to her. "I'm just fine. Not quite sure how I got here, but I found- I found mom, here, and we can help you if you let us."
"Help…" Rachel sounded tired. "You know, the X-Men tried to help, and they stabbed me and tried to finish the job over it, but… it'll be nice not to die alone."
Morgan turned her eyes to me, a desperate plea plainly visible in them. "I don't… I can't watch her die."
"I understand." I slipped the Speed Ring off my finger and felt, for the first time in weeks, as the magics that bolstered my body beyond human limits receded. There was no time for mourning the missing magic, as temporary as it would be, though, and I moved forwards.
Without consciously thinking about anything beyond the need to move faster, I felt the Crest of Flames activate, and the world slowed down around me. Rachel's eyes widened in slow motion, flames sputtering in her eyes and in an aura around her, but she wasn't fast enough to stop me from sliding the ring onto her thumb, the only finger that it wouldn't just fall off of.
As I let her go, I winced at the wiry, almost skeletal thinness of her arm- she may have been eating well of late, but from what little Morgan had said about her future, she'd been eating poorly if at all for far longer.
"Oh," said Rachel, some of the tension in her frame vanishing as the Speed Ring's Renewal spread through her body like a wave, and I just barely managed to catch her as she collapsed forwards onto me. "Oh, thank you. That feels… I can't hear the song anymore, thank you."
I turned to Morgan and mouthed "the song?" at her, and got a shrug in return.
Abruptly I became conscious of the whispering of people around us, just snatches and snippets of sentences, but enough to get the gist of things.
"-a mutie, you think-"
"-that lightshow, gotta be magic, I live on-"
"-call the Avengers-"
"-that wizard on Bleeker street-"
I looked up, and Morgan had pulled a scarf out of her coat and wrapped it around the lower half of her face. I could still tell it was her, through the power of the Forge and the connection to her it granted, but I could also feel the subtle magic radiating from her that was obfuscating her identity. "I think it's probably past time we evacuated this young lady to somewhere safer," I said, adding no small amount of vocal fry to my voice in an effort to make it less recognizable.
"I agree," Morgan replied, pulling out her grimoire and leafing through it. "Give me just a moment, and I should be able to… aha!"
Morgan flourished her hand, and in a circle of blue light surrounding a ring of arcane glyphs, space stuttered before resolving into a vaguely volcanic landscape, complete with the stink of sulfur.
"There we go, we should have time for me to actually locate the van so we can portal back," Morgan said, already flipping to a different page in her grimoire.
"Where… where'd we go?" slurred Rachel, the kind of exhaustion in her voice that promised that she was about half an inch from dropping off entirely into sleep.
"Just to Limbo for a tad bit. Don't worry, we won't be here for long enough to really have to worry about anyone here.
At the word "Limbo", Rachel stiffened and started squirming, trying and failing to push herself off of where she was leaning against my shoulder. "We have to leave now, I can't be here, Illyana will-"
"I will what?"
I turned halfway, making sure to keep myself between her and the new voice, and looked at the woman who had spoken.
At first glance, one could be forgiven for mistaking her for a normal schoolgirl- after all, she was dressed the part, with a cheap blouse and loose, well-worn jeans even if her facial features were striking, especially when framed with straw-colored hair.
Of course, that only went so far in the face of the glowing blue sword held in one hand, aimed vaguely down but not so far so that she couldn't bring it to bear immediately. Her eyes, too, were a major factor, glowing slightly with actinic light and regarding both Morgan and myself warily.
She twitched as the Forge rose up, as did Rachel, but she didn't do anything, and after a moment, when the Forge subsided, she relaxed.
Morgan chuckled nervously. "Whoops, kinda forgot you weren't dead in this time period."
This, oddly enough, got the blonde to drop the sword. "So you're the Morgan that Rachel's mentioned?"
"I am, yes. Sorry for trespassing, Illyana, but we, ah, needed a quick out. Not to worry, we'll be out of your hair once I can get a lock on the place we can shift back."
The blonde didn't say anything for a long moment, eyes flitting back and forth between me and Morgan, before nodding once, flicking her fingers at me. "You will take Rachel with you, and keep her safe, yes? Others will be seeking her out, and if you are not careful, they will quite happily kill you to control the avatar of the Phoenix."
"Trust me," said Morgan, baring her too-sharp teeth in a manner just a bit too lizardlike to be called a smile, "they won't make it to her."
Illyana gave Morgan one more scrutinizing gaze, then deflated, sword vanishing in a winking flash of blue light. When she turned to make eye contact with me, she looked much more like an overworked, underappreciated person with far too much on her plate than healthy, a child queen forced onto the throne too young. "Take good care of them, they deserve better. We all do, but… You can only help them, at least for now."
Before I could respond, a circle of white light expanded underneath us, and in a flash of light, we were standing right outside the van.
"Well then," I said, feeling Rachel slump against me and staggering briefly before I set my feet wider to brace the both of us. "Morgan, would you be so kind as to open the van? Something tells me that Rachel needs to sleep this off."
"I… sure, Mom," she said, and between the two of us, we managed to get Rachel into a sleeping bag on the floor of the van.
Closing the door, I sighed and gestured, summoning up the forge to provide a little bit of light in the abandoned subway tunnels we'd ended up parking the van in. "So, I think I'm missing some context."
Morgan also sighed, plopping down on a rough-hewn wooden chair that was matched to the tool bench. "Ask away, Mom. I can't promise answers to everything, but I'll do what I can."
"Okay, so." I gestured at the space we'd been teleported into, not that anything other than my memory could tell it from any other random patch of concrete. "Illyana. Who is she, what's her deal, what is Limbo, and why were you and Rachel so absolutely fucking terrified of her?"
Morgan scratched at her left arm with her right, and I could hear the sound of keratin on keratin as her nails scraped against the scales there. "You can't go for the easy questions, huh?"
"Sorry. If you'd prefer, I could ask who Rachel is to you?" I shrugged, dropping heavily onto the tool bench next to Morgan. "I'm not sure what the easy questions are for this situation, to be honest- you have a much better understanding of how…" I gestured around us. "How all this superpower shit works, so a lot of the foundational shit that you take for granted isn't stuff I can really wrap my head around yet. But people? Those I can ask about, at least."
Morgan sighed, and from the way her eyes lost their twinkle I was abruptly reminded of the fact that she'd lost both Madelyne and me before she'd had the chance to grow up.
"Rachel and I are… we're family, in one way or another. We haven't exactly had the chance to get genetically tested, and I don't know if she knows, but my best guess is that Mama and her mother are related. We spent some time together in the future, but we got separated after a Sentinel attack, and even though I looked for a while, I couldn't find her. I… it's good to see that she escaped that hellhole, even if not everyone did."
I smiled as gently as I could. "Glad you could reconnect with her."
Morgan nodded, eyes distant. "I'm not sure if she knows we're related, but… well. I'm no more capable of losing anyone else than you are."
I bonked the side of my head into Morgan's, dragging her into a hug. "Then we won't let that happen."
Morgan sniffled, then continued. "Illyana is… she's a mutant like Mama or Rachel, and she's also a sorceress, and she's the Queen of Limbo. If she's in Limbo, she's practically god, and she has a reputation for being… capricious at times. I can't say this for sure, but I think maybe Rachel was stabbed by one of her demons or maybe the X-Men, if she was so worried about Illyana hunting her down. She's… she was a major power, in our time, before she got killed."
I frowned. "She seems-" overworked, too young to be a queen, like someone being crushed under the weight of responsibility thrust upon her too young "-tired."
Morgan shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe by your sensibilities. To be entirely honest, being here is the most relaxed I think I've been in years, and the best sleep I've gotten. She just seemed like normal, at least to me."
I pressed my lips together. Every little tidbit I got about Morgan's future, the Days of Future Past, I got that much more concerned for her.
"Honestly, it's not so bad, once you get used to it," Morgan said. No Sentinels, Limbo isn't full of roaming packs of slavering demons anymore… it's all good."
I opened my mouth to speak, but paused as the Forge flared to life.
I got the impression of construction, flashes of memories of mortaring big blocks of stone together, planning out a building, binding wood together into a drawbridge, and more, but they receded. In their place, burning with the power of the Forge, was the impression of a gateway, and without thinking too much about it, I pulled on it.
A lattice of steel-coated metal appeared, and after a moment, Morgan squealed. "We've got a magic castle!"
I winced, then sighed, watching the now-identified portcullis rise up with the sound of chains clanking. "Alrighty then, let's get the van inside so we can get Rachel to sleep in an actual bed."
Perks gained:
Castle Jumper (Marvel Magic, 200CP): What is the point of living if you don't do it in style? Certainly, you know the importance of aesthetics even in the face of practicality... but that does not mean that something can't be both stylish and practical. You are the proud owner of a large European castle. It's practically straight out of a storybook, having stone walls, great towers -- hell, the thing even has a moat. However, despite its ancient appearance, it is fully updated to the modern times. Possessing everything from standard amenities such as running water and electricity to a state-of-the-art security system and laboratories. The way you live should make a statement, a fact that you seem to understand very well.
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-----
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.-----
How the hell is someone supposed to react to suddenly starting to perceive the world in four dimensions?Half the fucking problem was that I had no clue how to parse the sensory input that came out of the Crest of Flames, and I felt time flexing around me as Morgan dragged me into an out-of-the-way corner in the subway.
Somehow, she was much less bothered by the addition, and while I could chalk that up to it being weaker in her than in me, there was more to it than that, but what exactly that factor was was beyond my ability to wrap my head around right now.
"Mom, focus," she said, pulling my head forwards and down to bump foreheads with her. "Breathe. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight, I'll count for you. One… Two… Three… Four…"
I felt my lungs expand, the vice feeling around my chest that would have had me hunting for my inhaler not enough to stop me from breathing with the cool sensation that the Speed Ring's healing brought with it. More than that, though, I could feel something else within me rising up alongside the magic of the ring, and once I was breathing steadily again, I tried to feel it out.
When I did manage to isolate the sensation, the first thing I really noticed was that it smelled like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. The longer I spent focusing on it, the more I got a feel for it, and after what was probably only a couple of minutes, I could actually get a feel for the energies that the Forge had granted me, the Crest of Flames, and while actual precise control over it was beyond me, I could feel how it interacted with time around me, sticking a pair of oars into the massive ocean that was time, and I could feel as it made me… more.
I could also feel how it was incomplete.
The Crest of Flames was an incredible source of power, at its peak, but this was… not that. It almost felt like half of it had been sliced away, cleaner than a good knife through butter, and even as it filled me up and made me more than just human, I could feel how it was a shadow of what it could- would- be.
"Okay," I said, shuddering as I felt time pressing in against me. "Okay, I think I can handle it now. Thanks, Morgan."
"Any time, Mom," she said, smiling. "Now, come on, I-"
Both of us froze as we felt… something radiate through time, the Crest of Flames flaring to protect us from the tremendous pressure that whatever it was that was happening was putting off.
Morgan's eyes narrowed. "That was… that was the fucking Phoenix! And I think something else came through time, or some time traveler made a big move too."
"What should we… what should we do about it?" I asked, fingering Castform's Friend Ball in my pocket.
"Find out what's going on, hopefully," said Morgan, brow furrowing as she turned around on the spot, muttering under her breath and making gestures with her hands that presumably would help her pinpoint the location easier.
After a moment, she turned to look at me. "Come on, let's go. I can't figure out which train to catch from out here."
I nodded, feeling more than a little nervous, and followed her through the turnstiles and into the subway station at large, where Morgan proceeded to turn around a couple of times before deciding on one train that was just now pulling into the station. "This one," she said, confidently, all but dragging me onto the train after the people rushed off.
I could feel my hands trembling with nerves, like I sometimes was after having to take my inhaler, and I turned to Morgan, who was as even-keeled as ever. "How do you-"
"Stay so calm?" She chuckled wryly. "Practice, and too many fucking Sentinels. Don't worry, we all get jittery before the first time we really go out looking for problems."
The Forge flared up, but thankfully didn't disgorge anything, and the two of us waited on the train in a somewhat tense silence until the door dinged open.
"This is our stop," said Morgan, striding off the train confidently, and I followed after a moment of surprise. Emerging into the sunlight, it looked like we were in a park, and it took a moment for me to recognize the place from all the pictures that got splashed everywhere.
"Why would a time traveler choose Central Park to start shit?" I asked, turning to Morgan.
She shrugged. "No idea. I certainly wouldn't if I had any other choice, but maybe there's someone in this-"
There was a sound like a cat being dragged down a chalkboard biting and hissing, and a woman in a cape and little else was hurled out of the center of the park, crashing into the ground in a massive plume of dirt. Evidently, she was tough enough to take it, though, and she leapt back into the park without even a second look.
"What the fuck," I hissed, Golden Dagger halfway out of its sheath under my jacket.
Morgan frowned, then turned to the side, seeing a woman with short red hair in an equally red maid outfit stumbling out of the forest. "Fuck, Rachel?"
The woman turned to us, pale face looking almost waxy as she pressed one blood-covered hand to her stomach, which was sluggishly leaking blood.
"Morgan? I thought you were… I thought you died," she said, slumping forwards and swaying dizzily before forcing herself upright. "The Nimrod units… the Goblin Queen…"
"Nah, Rachel," said Morgan, walking towards the bloodied and battered woman with both hands held out to her. "I'm just fine. Not quite sure how I got here, but I found- I found mom, here, and we can help you if you let us."
"Help…" Rachel sounded tired. "You know, the X-Men tried to help, and they stabbed me and tried to finish the job over it, but… it'll be nice not to die alone."
Morgan turned her eyes to me, a desperate plea plainly visible in them. "I don't… I can't watch her die."
"I understand." I slipped the Speed Ring off my finger and felt, for the first time in weeks, as the magics that bolstered my body beyond human limits receded. There was no time for mourning the missing magic, as temporary as it would be, though, and I moved forwards.
Without consciously thinking about anything beyond the need to move faster, I felt the Crest of Flames activate, and the world slowed down around me. Rachel's eyes widened in slow motion, flames sputtering in her eyes and in an aura around her, but she wasn't fast enough to stop me from sliding the ring onto her thumb, the only finger that it wouldn't just fall off of.
As I let her go, I winced at the wiry, almost skeletal thinness of her arm- she may have been eating well of late, but from what little Morgan had said about her future, she'd been eating poorly if at all for far longer.
"Oh," said Rachel, some of the tension in her frame vanishing as the Speed Ring's Renewal spread through her body like a wave, and I just barely managed to catch her as she collapsed forwards onto me. "Oh, thank you. That feels… I can't hear the song anymore, thank you."
I turned to Morgan and mouthed "the song?" at her, and got a shrug in return.
Abruptly I became conscious of the whispering of people around us, just snatches and snippets of sentences, but enough to get the gist of things.
"-a mutie, you think-"
"-that lightshow, gotta be magic, I live on-"
"-call the Avengers-"
"-that wizard on Bleeker street-"
I looked up, and Morgan had pulled a scarf out of her coat and wrapped it around the lower half of her face. I could still tell it was her, through the power of the Forge and the connection to her it granted, but I could also feel the subtle magic radiating from her that was obfuscating her identity. "I think it's probably past time we evacuated this young lady to somewhere safer," I said, adding no small amount of vocal fry to my voice in an effort to make it less recognizable.
"I agree," Morgan replied, pulling out her grimoire and leafing through it. "Give me just a moment, and I should be able to… aha!"
Morgan flourished her hand, and in a circle of blue light surrounding a ring of arcane glyphs, space stuttered before resolving into a vaguely volcanic landscape, complete with the stink of sulfur.
"There we go, we should have time for me to actually locate the van so we can portal back," Morgan said, already flipping to a different page in her grimoire.
"Where… where'd we go?" slurred Rachel, the kind of exhaustion in her voice that promised that she was about half an inch from dropping off entirely into sleep.
"Just to Limbo for a tad bit. Don't worry, we won't be here for long enough to really have to worry about anyone here.
At the word "Limbo", Rachel stiffened and started squirming, trying and failing to push herself off of where she was leaning against my shoulder. "We have to leave now, I can't be here, Illyana will-"
"I will what?"
I turned halfway, making sure to keep myself between her and the new voice, and looked at the woman who had spoken.
At first glance, one could be forgiven for mistaking her for a normal schoolgirl- after all, she was dressed the part, with a cheap blouse and loose, well-worn jeans even if her facial features were striking, especially when framed with straw-colored hair.
Of course, that only went so far in the face of the glowing blue sword held in one hand, aimed vaguely down but not so far so that she couldn't bring it to bear immediately. Her eyes, too, were a major factor, glowing slightly with actinic light and regarding both Morgan and myself warily.
She twitched as the Forge rose up, as did Rachel, but she didn't do anything, and after a moment, when the Forge subsided, she relaxed.
Morgan chuckled nervously. "Whoops, kinda forgot you weren't dead in this time period."
This, oddly enough, got the blonde to drop the sword. "So you're the Morgan that Rachel's mentioned?"
"I am, yes. Sorry for trespassing, Illyana, but we, ah, needed a quick out. Not to worry, we'll be out of your hair once I can get a lock on the place we can shift back."
The blonde didn't say anything for a long moment, eyes flitting back and forth between me and Morgan, before nodding once, flicking her fingers at me. "You will take Rachel with you, and keep her safe, yes? Others will be seeking her out, and if you are not careful, they will quite happily kill you to control the avatar of the Phoenix."
"Trust me," said Morgan, baring her too-sharp teeth in a manner just a bit too lizardlike to be called a smile, "they won't make it to her."
Illyana gave Morgan one more scrutinizing gaze, then deflated, sword vanishing in a winking flash of blue light. When she turned to make eye contact with me, she looked much more like an overworked, underappreciated person with far too much on her plate than healthy, a child queen forced onto the throne too young. "Take good care of them, they deserve better. We all do, but… You can only help them, at least for now."
Before I could respond, a circle of white light expanded underneath us, and in a flash of light, we were standing right outside the van.
"Well then," I said, feeling Rachel slump against me and staggering briefly before I set my feet wider to brace the both of us. "Morgan, would you be so kind as to open the van? Something tells me that Rachel needs to sleep this off."
"I… sure, Mom," she said, and between the two of us, we managed to get Rachel into a sleeping bag on the floor of the van.
Closing the door, I sighed and gestured, summoning up the forge to provide a little bit of light in the abandoned subway tunnels we'd ended up parking the van in. "So, I think I'm missing some context."
Morgan also sighed, plopping down on a rough-hewn wooden chair that was matched to the tool bench. "Ask away, Mom. I can't promise answers to everything, but I'll do what I can."
"Okay, so." I gestured at the space we'd been teleported into, not that anything other than my memory could tell it from any other random patch of concrete. "Illyana. Who is she, what's her deal, what is Limbo, and why were you and Rachel so absolutely fucking terrified of her?"
Morgan scratched at her left arm with her right, and I could hear the sound of keratin on keratin as her nails scraped against the scales there. "You can't go for the easy questions, huh?"
"Sorry. If you'd prefer, I could ask who Rachel is to you?" I shrugged, dropping heavily onto the tool bench next to Morgan. "I'm not sure what the easy questions are for this situation, to be honest- you have a much better understanding of how…" I gestured around us. "How all this superpower shit works, so a lot of the foundational shit that you take for granted isn't stuff I can really wrap my head around yet. But people? Those I can ask about, at least."
Morgan sighed, and from the way her eyes lost their twinkle I was abruptly reminded of the fact that she'd lost both Madelyne and me before she'd had the chance to grow up.
"Rachel and I are… we're family, in one way or another. We haven't exactly had the chance to get genetically tested, and I don't know if she knows, but my best guess is that Mama and her mother are related. We spent some time together in the future, but we got separated after a Sentinel attack, and even though I looked for a while, I couldn't find her. I… it's good to see that she escaped that hellhole, even if not everyone did."
I smiled as gently as I could. "Glad you could reconnect with her."
Morgan nodded, eyes distant. "I'm not sure if she knows we're related, but… well. I'm no more capable of losing anyone else than you are."
I bonked the side of my head into Morgan's, dragging her into a hug. "Then we won't let that happen."
Morgan sniffled, then continued. "Illyana is… she's a mutant like Mama or Rachel, and she's also a sorceress, and she's the Queen of Limbo. If she's in Limbo, she's practically god, and she has a reputation for being… capricious at times. I can't say this for sure, but I think maybe Rachel was stabbed by one of her demons or maybe the X-Men, if she was so worried about Illyana hunting her down. She's… she was a major power, in our time, before she got killed."
I frowned. "She seems-" overworked, too young to be a queen, like someone being crushed under the weight of responsibility thrust upon her too young "-tired."
Morgan shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe by your sensibilities. To be entirely honest, being here is the most relaxed I think I've been in years, and the best sleep I've gotten. She just seemed like normal, at least to me."
I pressed my lips together. Every little tidbit I got about Morgan's future, the Days of Future Past, I got that much more concerned for her.
"Honestly, it's not so bad, once you get used to it," Morgan said. No Sentinels, Limbo isn't full of roaming packs of slavering demons anymore… it's all good."
I opened my mouth to speak, but paused as the Forge flared to life.
I got the impression of construction, flashes of memories of mortaring big blocks of stone together, planning out a building, binding wood together into a drawbridge, and more, but they receded. In their place, burning with the power of the Forge, was the impression of a gateway, and without thinking too much about it, I pulled on it.
A lattice of steel-coated metal appeared, and after a moment, Morgan squealed. "We've got a magic castle!"
I winced, then sighed, watching the now-identified portcullis rise up with the sound of chains clanking. "Alrighty then, let's get the van inside so we can get Rachel to sleep in an actual bed."
-----
And that's that!Perks gained:
Castle Jumper (Marvel Magic, 200CP): What is the point of living if you don't do it in style? Certainly, you know the importance of aesthetics even in the face of practicality... but that does not mean that something can't be both stylish and practical. You are the proud owner of a large European castle. It's practically straight out of a storybook, having stone walls, great towers -- hell, the thing even has a moat. However, despite its ancient appearance, it is fully updated to the modern times. Possessing everything from standard amenities such as running water and electricity to a state-of-the-art security system and laboratories. The way you live should make a statement, a fact that you seem to understand very well.
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Lucifra), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early, plus for this fic see two chapters not available on other platforms yet.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin, Mtron, AntaeusTheGiant, Starfall20, Danielle, Ultama Omega, Asuran Fun, KOOLAID, Journeyman_Mike, Josef Haerle, Freddie Capps, James, Darkarma, TheCosyIntrovert, JChuckS, Maleficarum, Allen Baker, Bailey Matutine, Mr Phantom, Thomas Vernet, Conor Cooney and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct line to ask me, or if you want to see me chatting about my writing process, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, on the upside, possible 2nd daughter acquisition?
He Went Galumphing Back
- Pronouns
- She/They
Everyone needs a home.
Now, ordinarily, this was not something that would be considered noteworthy. Limbo has always been known for, among other things, squabbling demons and ambitious sorcerers, who had a tendency towards claiming more power than they could hold. Inevitably, these demons and sorcerers would seek to build themselves strongholds either through strength of arms or arcane might, be they castle, tower, pit, or some other defensible formulation.
This castle, however, was not built. It simply was, and had always been, and yet had only appeared recently.
It was this that drew the attention of the ruler of Limbo.
There was no swelling of magic, no construction crew, no piles of material brought in from elsewhere, nothing. One moment, there was an empty, featureless plain surrounded with mountains, and the next, a castle stood there.
And it was an impressive castle, too. The craftswork of the stone, the architecture, even the mystical presence of the thing, they were all beauteous, practically dripping with the raw energy of creation in sufficient quantities to warn off all but the most foolish and most powerful of Limbo's denizens.
Over the front gate hung two symbols, and where the rest of the castle dripped with energy, they verily glowed with it. One of them, a seething power, vaguely resembled a face, if that face had two eyes on each cheek and a braided goatee underneath, all picked out in a purple so dark that one could be excused for mistaking it for black. The other, in counterpoint, was two concentric circles, the inner whole and the outer missing sections at both the top and bottom, transfixed by rays that came out at diagonals from the inner circle, glowing gold with the raw power of life, the very underpinnings of the multiverse seemingly flowing through this one sigil like a waterwheel.
Already, the foolhardy had begun to approach the castle, as evidenced by the smoking corpses of demons and a pile of ash that may, once, have been a mortal sorcerer.
Illyana Rasputin did not approach the castle through arcane powers or under cover of stealth. No, she approached it with her own two feet, with no other aid than the plane stretching one step to cover ten paces worth of distance, and, as she strode up to the drawbridge, it opened for her, as if bidding her welcome.
Illyana did not watch as the drawbridge slammed up a mere six inches from her heel, nor when the small swarm of demons and other, darker things that sought to follow in her wake were destroyed by golden light blazing forth from the circular symbol above the drawbridge.
No, she just continued walking forwards, following where her awareness of the secrets of Limbo told her that the owner of the castle was.
Opening one last door, she expected a throne room, perhaps, or even a bedroom, either a place to lord over all who entered or an unwelcome intrusion that she would have to apologize for.
Instead, she encountered a faceful of fragrant steam as she opened the door to the kitchen and beheld two women looking at a stove with a pot of something steaming on a burner.
Inside were the two who had just used Limbo to escape the pursuit of Nimrod, the Sentinel. Morgan was, just as before, wearing travel-rumpled clothing that in no way diminished her presence as a nascent godling with enough destructive power to outstrip some pantheons, but May had changed out of the rumpled jeans and stained flannel into something that looked more like a robe, with an apron over top, and it looked…
Well, Illyana wasn't one for sentiment, not after having to discard that part of herself under Belasco's tender mercies, but she felt in that moment like May embodied the sentiment of home and, for just a moment, felt safe.
"Ah, miss Rasputin. Here for dinner? I've made more than enough chili for one more guest," May said.
"Oh, I, ah," floundered Illyana. Of all the things that could have happened upon entering a new castle, she had no way to expect an impromptu invitation to dinner, especially when it could be argued that she was intruding. "I wouldn't want to intrude…"
May chuckled. "Nonsense! I don't know what they're feeding you kids over at Xavier's mansion, but it's clearly not enough, if how skinny you and Rachel are is any indication!" She gestured with a wooden spoon towards the plain wooden table over in one corner of the kitchen. "Have a seat, young lady, the food should be ready in five, maybe ten minutes. Morgan, if you'd be so kind as to retrieve Rachel for me?"
"Right away, Mom," said the human-shaped dragon, who flicked Illyana a wary look on her way out of the room.
"I'm so sorry about the intrusion," May said, once Morgan had left. "If I'd known, or had any way of warning you, I would have, but… well, you know how it is dealing with higher powers, no sense of social graces."
"Not to worry," said Illyana. "I've dealt with my fair share of cosmic powers before."
For some reason, this seemed to make May deeply sad for a moment, before she shook off the sentiment. "How's your head for spice, miss Rasputin?"
"I can't say I'm accustomed to much spicy food," Illyana said. "Xavier's tends towards, ah, more universally compatible foods, to avoid repeats of something that happened before I arrived with Nightcrawler having a bad reaction to one of Logan's favorite recipes, or so I've been told."
"I haven't heard the whole story either," said Rachel, who was visibly drooping but moving under her own power despite Morgan hovering at her shoulder. She'd changed out of the bloodstained maid outfit she was wearing and into a robe of some sort, poofy and soft-looking, and Illyana had a moment of irrational jealousy for the injured girl over it.
"I don't know about Kurt, but I know that David almost filled the entire room with cotton candy after Mama and I made Mom's chili and he tried some. To be fair, though, we didn't have the proper molido powder, so we had to use… I think Mama got a couple of Scotch bonnets and dried them out, so that batch was way spicier than normal," said Morgan, dragging a chair out for Rachel before the girl could do more than reach for one herself.
"Well," said May, trailed by… something floating about head level that looked vaguely like if a child's drawing of a smiling cloud had come to life. May held four bowls filled with spicy-smelling red chili, which she placed in front of each of them in a maneuver that looked almost needlessly complicated to Illyana, and the floating creature was balancing a plate with a pile of tortillas a couple of inches thick on top of it. "There shouldn't be any Scotch bonnets here, the pantry here is better stocked than I'd expected. Thank you, Castform."
Seeing Morgan take a big bite and sigh like she'd just made a homecoming after a decade away, Illyana took a somewhat more cautious spoonful.
The spice was there, yes, but what really bowled Illyana over was the sheer amount of love that had gone into the dish. This was something that May had strong positive memories associated with, even if a thread of bitterness had woven its way into her feelings about it, and this was the kind of recipe she'd made so often not out of some sort of obligation or desire to cling to good memories, but out of the love of the dish and who she was feeding it to.
If not for Rachel frantically scrabbling at the tortilla pile, Illyana would have found herself tearing up at the sheer intensity of the emotion in the food. She hadn't had a proper home-cooked meal in years, since before she'd been taken by Belasco, but if this was what they tasted like now that she could sense emotions as well as flavors, she'd have to find a chance to have more.
"In case it wasn't clear, Illyana," said May, causing Illyana's still-teary gaze to snap up to meet the older woman's, "you're welcome to come over anytime. Rachel, I would extend the offer to you as well, even if you do end up going back to… Xavier's mansion, I believe?"
Rachel nodded, eyes still watering from the spice, and though Morgan gave Illyana a piercing look, like she was a puzzle that had just been rotated into a configuration that made more sense, no one made any fuss, allowing Illyana to quash her emotions before replying to May. "Thank you, Mrs. Trujillo."
"Please, call me May," she said, the sparkle of her eyes dimming briefly. "Mrs. Trujillo was my mom, and… well, just call me May, okay?"
"Okay," said Illyana, stuffing another spoonful in her mouth to avoid the need to reply beyond the single word and in so doing put her foot in her mouth. As she swallowed the spoonful of chili, she thought that, just maybe, she could get used to this.
She wasn't sure if that was more scary or comforting.
She'd been in captivity for… well, she wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been there, but it was probably in the general neighborhood of two or three weeks, and she hated every second of it. She needed to use the bathroom? He was watching her like a hawk. Feeding time? He was telekinetically moving her arms for her just so that she didn't "get any ideas" or whatever. And that all ignored the experimentation that he was doing, which more often than not needed some sort of sample, of which blood was the least obtrusive to obtain.
The least intolerable parts were when he left her unrestrained within the enclosure he sometimes left her in, all padded walls and flickering incandescent bulbs recessed into the ceiling. More often, though, he left her bound to one bed or another, gazing up at the ceilings when she wasn't blindfolded and listening to the sounds of various machines, never sure when Essex would next appear or what he would want when he did. Sometimes, he brought in other people when she was blindfolded, and they'd pry open her mouth or prod at her arms, like she was so much livestock, and she had to endure Essex's telekinetic grasp holding her entirely still no matter how much she strained to move something, anything.
This time, though, when she opened her eyes to the inside of a blindfold held over her head, begging to be able to see something, anything, something was different.
She saw the ceiling, all uniformly white painted, and then, after a moment, what she saw expanded, showing the room that she'd heard Essex turn the light off in like it was midday, all full of boxy analysis devices and other, more cruel implements.
From there, it just kept expanding until the entire building was laid bare to her, every crawl space and bubble inside the concrete visible and lit up like it was midday. She had the feeling that she could push it farther, see outside the building, but she didn't need quite that big a field of vision now, not while she was still stuck inside the building with no way of getting loose.
The crawl spaces and the other voids, however, were not nearly as important as seeing Essex in a conference room, of all places, with a collection of roughnecks and sharps.
One of them, a hulking man in what looked like someone had stitched a faux fur boa to a skintight bodysuit, snarled at Essex. "You promised us blood, Sinister, not this waiting bullshit! Either you can let us at the Morlocks or provide something else, like that morsel you've got somewhere in this building." He sniffed the air. "She smells scared, too. Scared prey's always the best.
Essex- Sinister?- raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Patience is a virtue, Sabertooth. By holding our strike until tomorrow, the X-men will be weakened. Summers is blinded by sentimentality, he will not leave Grey, but tomorrow the others will be scattered across the city seeking out the Summers child, and the Hellfire Club has already crawled back into their mansion to lick their wounds. They will not be nearly so able to interrupt your hunt tomorrow, and you will be able to glut yourselves on the flesh of these stains on the face of mutantkind without the interference of Xavier's legacy."
Sabertooth grumbled, but with the rest of the people looking at least vaguely mollified by Sinister's response, he didn't have enough room to push.
"Fine. We've got one coming in from out of town, to lead us right to the nest, and she won't be in until tomorrow." Sabertooth was… Madelyne would never go so far as to call it a pout, not with teeth and claws like that, but he looked almost petulant, crossing his arms and glaring at Sinister.
"You have one of your number herding her, I take it?"
"Yeah, Harpoon's on her," replied a tall man with leathery skin and a bloodred cape hanging most of the way down his back, most of his torso covered in metal plates save for his left arm. "He'll make sure she makes it to the rendezvous."
"Very well," Sinister replied. "Any other… complaints?" When no one else spoke up, he continued. "In that case, prepare yourselves, my Marauders. Tomorrow, you eliminate the blight on the world that is the Morlocks!"
As these Marauders dispersed, Madelyne pressed the edge of her new vision outwards as far as she could take it. She wasn't sure what, if anything, she could do with it, but if she could interfere, save these Morlocks somehow, she had to at least try.
She couldn't save May from the bastard, but maybe she could save these people.
Perks Earned:
None
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Lucifra), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early, plus for this fic see two chapters not available on other platforms yet.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin, Mtron, AntaeusTheGiant, Starfall20, Danielle, Ultama Omega, Asuran Fun, KOOLAID, Journeyman_Mike, Josef Haerle, Freddie Capps, James, Darkarma, TheCosyIntrovert, JChuckS, James Blessing, Maleficarum, Allen Baker, Bailey Matutine, Mr Phantom, Thomas Vernet, Conor Cooney and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct line to ask me, or if you want to see me chatting about my writing process, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Beta'd by… just me, this time.-----
There was a new castle in Limbo.Now, ordinarily, this was not something that would be considered noteworthy. Limbo has always been known for, among other things, squabbling demons and ambitious sorcerers, who had a tendency towards claiming more power than they could hold. Inevitably, these demons and sorcerers would seek to build themselves strongholds either through strength of arms or arcane might, be they castle, tower, pit, or some other defensible formulation.
This castle, however, was not built. It simply was, and had always been, and yet had only appeared recently.
It was this that drew the attention of the ruler of Limbo.
There was no swelling of magic, no construction crew, no piles of material brought in from elsewhere, nothing. One moment, there was an empty, featureless plain surrounded with mountains, and the next, a castle stood there.
And it was an impressive castle, too. The craftswork of the stone, the architecture, even the mystical presence of the thing, they were all beauteous, practically dripping with the raw energy of creation in sufficient quantities to warn off all but the most foolish and most powerful of Limbo's denizens.
Over the front gate hung two symbols, and where the rest of the castle dripped with energy, they verily glowed with it. One of them, a seething power, vaguely resembled a face, if that face had two eyes on each cheek and a braided goatee underneath, all picked out in a purple so dark that one could be excused for mistaking it for black. The other, in counterpoint, was two concentric circles, the inner whole and the outer missing sections at both the top and bottom, transfixed by rays that came out at diagonals from the inner circle, glowing gold with the raw power of life, the very underpinnings of the multiverse seemingly flowing through this one sigil like a waterwheel.
Already, the foolhardy had begun to approach the castle, as evidenced by the smoking corpses of demons and a pile of ash that may, once, have been a mortal sorcerer.
Illyana Rasputin did not approach the castle through arcane powers or under cover of stealth. No, she approached it with her own two feet, with no other aid than the plane stretching one step to cover ten paces worth of distance, and, as she strode up to the drawbridge, it opened for her, as if bidding her welcome.
Illyana did not watch as the drawbridge slammed up a mere six inches from her heel, nor when the small swarm of demons and other, darker things that sought to follow in her wake were destroyed by golden light blazing forth from the circular symbol above the drawbridge.
No, she just continued walking forwards, following where her awareness of the secrets of Limbo told her that the owner of the castle was.
Opening one last door, she expected a throne room, perhaps, or even a bedroom, either a place to lord over all who entered or an unwelcome intrusion that she would have to apologize for.
Instead, she encountered a faceful of fragrant steam as she opened the door to the kitchen and beheld two women looking at a stove with a pot of something steaming on a burner.
Inside were the two who had just used Limbo to escape the pursuit of Nimrod, the Sentinel. Morgan was, just as before, wearing travel-rumpled clothing that in no way diminished her presence as a nascent godling with enough destructive power to outstrip some pantheons, but May had changed out of the rumpled jeans and stained flannel into something that looked more like a robe, with an apron over top, and it looked…
Well, Illyana wasn't one for sentiment, not after having to discard that part of herself under Belasco's tender mercies, but she felt in that moment like May embodied the sentiment of home and, for just a moment, felt safe.
"Ah, miss Rasputin. Here for dinner? I've made more than enough chili for one more guest," May said.
"Oh, I, ah," floundered Illyana. Of all the things that could have happened upon entering a new castle, she had no way to expect an impromptu invitation to dinner, especially when it could be argued that she was intruding. "I wouldn't want to intrude…"
May chuckled. "Nonsense! I don't know what they're feeding you kids over at Xavier's mansion, but it's clearly not enough, if how skinny you and Rachel are is any indication!" She gestured with a wooden spoon towards the plain wooden table over in one corner of the kitchen. "Have a seat, young lady, the food should be ready in five, maybe ten minutes. Morgan, if you'd be so kind as to retrieve Rachel for me?"
"Right away, Mom," said the human-shaped dragon, who flicked Illyana a wary look on her way out of the room.
"I'm so sorry about the intrusion," May said, once Morgan had left. "If I'd known, or had any way of warning you, I would have, but… well, you know how it is dealing with higher powers, no sense of social graces."
"Not to worry," said Illyana. "I've dealt with my fair share of cosmic powers before."
For some reason, this seemed to make May deeply sad for a moment, before she shook off the sentiment. "How's your head for spice, miss Rasputin?"
"I can't say I'm accustomed to much spicy food," Illyana said. "Xavier's tends towards, ah, more universally compatible foods, to avoid repeats of something that happened before I arrived with Nightcrawler having a bad reaction to one of Logan's favorite recipes, or so I've been told."
"I haven't heard the whole story either," said Rachel, who was visibly drooping but moving under her own power despite Morgan hovering at her shoulder. She'd changed out of the bloodstained maid outfit she was wearing and into a robe of some sort, poofy and soft-looking, and Illyana had a moment of irrational jealousy for the injured girl over it.
"I don't know about Kurt, but I know that David almost filled the entire room with cotton candy after Mama and I made Mom's chili and he tried some. To be fair, though, we didn't have the proper molido powder, so we had to use… I think Mama got a couple of Scotch bonnets and dried them out, so that batch was way spicier than normal," said Morgan, dragging a chair out for Rachel before the girl could do more than reach for one herself.
"Well," said May, trailed by… something floating about head level that looked vaguely like if a child's drawing of a smiling cloud had come to life. May held four bowls filled with spicy-smelling red chili, which she placed in front of each of them in a maneuver that looked almost needlessly complicated to Illyana, and the floating creature was balancing a plate with a pile of tortillas a couple of inches thick on top of it. "There shouldn't be any Scotch bonnets here, the pantry here is better stocked than I'd expected. Thank you, Castform."
Seeing Morgan take a big bite and sigh like she'd just made a homecoming after a decade away, Illyana took a somewhat more cautious spoonful.
The spice was there, yes, but what really bowled Illyana over was the sheer amount of love that had gone into the dish. This was something that May had strong positive memories associated with, even if a thread of bitterness had woven its way into her feelings about it, and this was the kind of recipe she'd made so often not out of some sort of obligation or desire to cling to good memories, but out of the love of the dish and who she was feeding it to.
If not for Rachel frantically scrabbling at the tortilla pile, Illyana would have found herself tearing up at the sheer intensity of the emotion in the food. She hadn't had a proper home-cooked meal in years, since before she'd been taken by Belasco, but if this was what they tasted like now that she could sense emotions as well as flavors, she'd have to find a chance to have more.
"In case it wasn't clear, Illyana," said May, causing Illyana's still-teary gaze to snap up to meet the older woman's, "you're welcome to come over anytime. Rachel, I would extend the offer to you as well, even if you do end up going back to… Xavier's mansion, I believe?"
Rachel nodded, eyes still watering from the spice, and though Morgan gave Illyana a piercing look, like she was a puzzle that had just been rotated into a configuration that made more sense, no one made any fuss, allowing Illyana to quash her emotions before replying to May. "Thank you, Mrs. Trujillo."
"Please, call me May," she said, the sparkle of her eyes dimming briefly. "Mrs. Trujillo was my mom, and… well, just call me May, okay?"
"Okay," said Illyana, stuffing another spoonful in her mouth to avoid the need to reply beyond the single word and in so doing put her foot in her mouth. As she swallowed the spoonful of chili, she thought that, just maybe, she could get used to this.
She wasn't sure if that was more scary or comforting.
-----
Madelyne Pryor was more than a little bit worried.She'd been in captivity for… well, she wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been there, but it was probably in the general neighborhood of two or three weeks, and she hated every second of it. She needed to use the bathroom? He was watching her like a hawk. Feeding time? He was telekinetically moving her arms for her just so that she didn't "get any ideas" or whatever. And that all ignored the experimentation that he was doing, which more often than not needed some sort of sample, of which blood was the least obtrusive to obtain.
The least intolerable parts were when he left her unrestrained within the enclosure he sometimes left her in, all padded walls and flickering incandescent bulbs recessed into the ceiling. More often, though, he left her bound to one bed or another, gazing up at the ceilings when she wasn't blindfolded and listening to the sounds of various machines, never sure when Essex would next appear or what he would want when he did. Sometimes, he brought in other people when she was blindfolded, and they'd pry open her mouth or prod at her arms, like she was so much livestock, and she had to endure Essex's telekinetic grasp holding her entirely still no matter how much she strained to move something, anything.
This time, though, when she opened her eyes to the inside of a blindfold held over her head, begging to be able to see something, anything, something was different.
She saw the ceiling, all uniformly white painted, and then, after a moment, what she saw expanded, showing the room that she'd heard Essex turn the light off in like it was midday, all full of boxy analysis devices and other, more cruel implements.
From there, it just kept expanding until the entire building was laid bare to her, every crawl space and bubble inside the concrete visible and lit up like it was midday. She had the feeling that she could push it farther, see outside the building, but she didn't need quite that big a field of vision now, not while she was still stuck inside the building with no way of getting loose.
The crawl spaces and the other voids, however, were not nearly as important as seeing Essex in a conference room, of all places, with a collection of roughnecks and sharps.
One of them, a hulking man in what looked like someone had stitched a faux fur boa to a skintight bodysuit, snarled at Essex. "You promised us blood, Sinister, not this waiting bullshit! Either you can let us at the Morlocks or provide something else, like that morsel you've got somewhere in this building." He sniffed the air. "She smells scared, too. Scared prey's always the best.
Essex- Sinister?- raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Patience is a virtue, Sabertooth. By holding our strike until tomorrow, the X-men will be weakened. Summers is blinded by sentimentality, he will not leave Grey, but tomorrow the others will be scattered across the city seeking out the Summers child, and the Hellfire Club has already crawled back into their mansion to lick their wounds. They will not be nearly so able to interrupt your hunt tomorrow, and you will be able to glut yourselves on the flesh of these stains on the face of mutantkind without the interference of Xavier's legacy."
Sabertooth grumbled, but with the rest of the people looking at least vaguely mollified by Sinister's response, he didn't have enough room to push.
"Fine. We've got one coming in from out of town, to lead us right to the nest, and she won't be in until tomorrow." Sabertooth was… Madelyne would never go so far as to call it a pout, not with teeth and claws like that, but he looked almost petulant, crossing his arms and glaring at Sinister.
"You have one of your number herding her, I take it?"
"Yeah, Harpoon's on her," replied a tall man with leathery skin and a bloodred cape hanging most of the way down his back, most of his torso covered in metal plates save for his left arm. "He'll make sure she makes it to the rendezvous."
"Very well," Sinister replied. "Any other… complaints?" When no one else spoke up, he continued. "In that case, prepare yourselves, my Marauders. Tomorrow, you eliminate the blight on the world that is the Morlocks!"
As these Marauders dispersed, Madelyne pressed the edge of her new vision outwards as far as she could take it. She wasn't sure what, if anything, she could do with it, but if she could interfere, save these Morlocks somehow, she had to at least try.
She couldn't save May from the bastard, but maybe she could save these people.
-----
And that's that!Perks Earned:
None
If you want to support me as a writer, I've got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Lucifra), and if you become a patron, you can see my chapters a week early, plus for this fic see two chapters not available on other platforms yet.
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin, Mtron, AntaeusTheGiant, Starfall20, Danielle, Ultama Omega, Asuran Fun, KOOLAID, Journeyman_Mike, Josef Haerle, Freddie Capps, James, Darkarma, TheCosyIntrovert, JChuckS, James Blessing, Maleficarum, Allen Baker, Bailey Matutine, Mr Phantom, Thomas Vernet, Conor Cooney and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct line to ask me, or if you want to see me chatting about my writing process, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And we're back. Hopefully our two lovebirds are reunited eventually. And in a good way at that.
Is it just me or did we just create a foster home for homeless young mutants in limbo?
. . . . ... I'm gonna take a wild guess and suggest that you either are posting in the wrong thread, or are reading an entirely different story that, at least I, are.
Also, unless the thread OP is taking suggestions and directions on their Patreon account, or Discord server; then it's just the thread OP doing the writing, planning, and world building. I.E. there is no "We."
On top of that, an open invitation to Illyana and Rachel, whom while a temporally displaced young teenager; does not an Orphanage make. And is even a far cry from being even a youth center for neglected mutant teenagers. So, no, the thread OP did not just write into existence a halfway house for homeless/neglected/runaway mutant teenagers. See, first statement. {Edit} Though I do admit it also doesn't preclude that it could become such a halfway house for such people.
Also, unless the thread OP is taking suggestions and directions on their Patreon account, or Discord server; then it's just the thread OP doing the writing, planning, and world building. I.E. there is no "We."
On top of that, an open invitation to Illyana and Rachel, whom while a temporally displaced young teenager; does not an Orphanage make. And is even a far cry from being even a youth center for neglected mutant teenagers. So, no, the thread OP did not just write into existence a halfway house for homeless/neglected/runaway mutant teenagers. See, first statement. {Edit} Though I do admit it also doesn't preclude that it could become such a halfway house for such people.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- She/They
That's the plan, although I haven't quite managed to write up to that point.
Even if it did, like… castle under siege in Limbo is not exactly a great environment for kids to grow up