She grunted with the strain, and her shield failed. Tentacles lashed at her. But before they could smash her to pulp, the deity turned to stone, which instantly shattered into tiny pieces. Once the clattering rain of gravel hit the ground, it was all but indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.
Jean looked about. Rogue’s first adversary lay scattered across the plain in a vast sheet of slime and filth. As a result of the two X-Men’s victories, the possessed woman’s ghostly form had taken on substance and definition. But now, raging in countless inhuman voices, the other four Elder Gods were converging on their assailants. Which meant no more surprise attacks, and no more dealing with the deities one at a time, either.
As their training dictated, Jean and Rogue took up positions hovering back to back. Theoretically, that should have protected them from attacks from the rear, but with the Elder Gods’ scores of tentacles twisting and whipping in all directions, it scarcely helped at all. Phoenix dodged madly, flung up one psychokinetic barrier after another, meanwhile thrusting repeatedly with her telepathy. At last she stabbed through a second god’s armor. This time, the immense thing simply vanished, present one second and gone the next.
The lethal strike had required a supreme effort, and perhaps it had slowed Jean down. Or perhaps she simply wasn’t expecting an attack at range, since up to now, the Dark Ones had only tried to smash or grab her with their limbs. At any rate, when the blasts of blue flame erupted from another deity’s ragged, oozing sores, she failed to throw up a shield in time.
The fire seared her, stunned her, and started her tumbling in free fall. She struggled to focus her power anew, to pull up and fly, and then two colossal appendages—one a slate-gray flipper, the other a mottled, chancrous, three-fingered hand— clapped shut around her and squeezed.
The impact was agonizing, and the pressure, irresistible. Knowing she was finished, she reached out for Rogue’s mind and bequeathed her all that remained of her strength. An instant later she was gone.
Rogue darted this way and that, blasting the Elder Gods with dazzling, crackling lightning bolts. In the real world, she knew, enough time had elapsed that she probably no longer possessed Ororo’s powers. But in the universe of her own mind, if she could imagine something, she could do it, just as Jean had promised.
After all the anguish, bewilderment, and humiliation she’d endured, it felt glorious to be herself again, to lash out at the forces that had done their best to break her and make her their tool. And by God, even though she was rapidly tiring, she and Jean were going to beat them. Between them, they’d already accounted for three of the living mountains, and unless she was mistaken, this fourth one was about to—
A sudden surge of energy infused her with fresh strength. She experienced a fleeting impression of iron resolution and excruciating pain, and then her mindlink with Phoenix dissolved. Which could only mean that the other X-Man had been destroyed. Snarling, Rogue hurled yet another electrical discharge.
But now, despite her augmented power, the tide of battle turned inexorably against her. With Jean gone, it became steadily more difficult to shift her perception, view the Elder Gods as patterns of energy, and so determine their weak points. Moreover, she soon began to tire again. And worst of all, now that it was three against one, she had to struggle so frantically to avoid the monsters’ ceaseless attacks that it was frequently impossible to strike back at all.
The colossal horrors sprouted new sets of mouths, which for once all cried in unison, in human speech. “Give up, slave! You cannot win! You belong to us now!”
Like hell I do! thought Rogue, zigzagging at top speed to avoid three sets of huge, clacking chelae and then a blue ray that, judging by the chill it spread through the air, was evidently intended to freeze her. There had to be a way to pull this off. If only the monsters hadn’t nailed Jean. If only she weren’t now so badly outnumbered!
Then it occurred to her that even with Phoenix gone, perhaps she didn’t have to be outnumbered if she wished it otherwise, not if the only limit to her powers was her own willpower and imagination. “Come help me!” she shouted.
For a moment, nothing happened. Her heart sank, and the Dark Ones seemed to loom even huger. Then all the human psychic ghosts she'd absorbed over the years emerged from their hiding places in the pits and craters. Like herself, they’d derived strength and substance from the demise of the first three Elder Gods. Enough so that, although many still looked haggard and faded, they were ready to fight.
Captain America’s shield, intact once more, whirled through the air, struck the flank of a Dark One, bounced, hit a second one, and rebounded into his red-gloved hand. Nightcrawler attacked with his fists, Storm, her lightning, and the Magus, his strength. Colossus picked up Wolverine and threw him in the maneuver they called a fastball special; landing atop one of the malignant deities, the Canadian slashed it with his claws. The hulking Juggernaut tore chunks of flesh from its base, and Shadowcat phased through their attacks, distracting them long enough for Professor Xavier to strike them with psionic bolts. Spiral spun her six arms in an intricate pattern, casting a spell, while the Human Torch threw balls of fire at the evil deities. Even Cody, still the slender blond boy whose life Rogue had stolen rather than the emaciated man who’d died in her arms years later, battered one of the titanic horrors with a rock.
Rogue now felt the strength leaving her body at an appalling rate. As she’d once drained these phantoms of their vitality, so now they were siphoning hers to power their assault. But judging by the damage they were inflicting, and the way the Elder Gods were thrashing and bellowing in pain and alarm, these avatars of her victims also represented her best hope of ending her possession.
Concentrating fiercely, she managed to view the Dark Ones as energy constructs one last time, then hurled thunderbolts at their vulnerable points. “Hit them where I’m hitting them!” she cried, and her army did its best to obey. She started ramming the monstrosities in a series of kamikaze dives, smashing into them with every bit of her waning strength and speed, heedless of whatever damage she might be doing to herself in the process.
Veering back and forth, she slipped through a writhing maze of tentacles and crashed squarely into a Dark One’s weak spot, an organ that currently resembled a squirming, rotting yellow rose. The deity exploded in a dazzling flash, and the force of the blast slammed into her and hurled her backward. Stunned, she plummeted toward the ground.
As she fell, the two remaining Elder Gods perished, one in a second explosion, the other imploding, crumbling in on itself until, an instant later, not a trace of it remained. Then she hit the ground.
Or rather... the floor? Dazed, she realized her awareness was back in the material world. Back in her real body, not just a psychic simulation of it. Her flesh writhed and flowed as it shed the deformities her possession had imposed on it.
Jean lay beside her. Scott and Logan stood over the two of them, fighting to hold off a horde of demons. Belasco confronted Kurt—how had he gotten involved in this?—behind a bloodstained altar, and under the lofty ceiling, the physical manifestation of a powerful magic pulsed and shimmered.
Rogue guessed that as long as Belasco was still functional, the spell that he and the Elder Gods had woven in concert was still going to proceed to its ghastly conclusion. No problem. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than help Kurt make the sorcerer nonfunctional. “Payback time, sugar,” she whispered, and tried to draw herself to her feet.
It was only when that effort failed that she felt just how terribly the battle to expel the Dark Ones from her psyche had drained her. Her head spun, and she struggled desperately to hold onto consciousness, but it slipped away from her anyway.
Chapter 15
For a split second more, the depths of Kurt’s psyche writhed, and then the sensation passed, leaving him unchanged and free to act. “I keep telling you,” he said to Belasco, grinning, “you have me confused with someone else.” He completed the cut to t
he flank.
Caught by surprise, Belasco only barely managed to parry “So be it, then,” the sorcerer said. “In that case, you’ll simply have to die.” He swung his glowing sword in a cut at Kurt’s knee.
The mutant leapt over the stroke, aimed his saber for a slash at Belasco’s chest, and then something warned him that his adversary’s sword stroke had been a sort of feint. Instead of following through on his intent to attack, the X-Man teleported three feet to the right.
A blaze of crackling azure fire ripped through the space he’d occupied only a moment before. Evidently Belasco could fence and cast spells at the same time.
Determined to end the fight before the homed man could draw a bead on him anew, Nightcrawler teleported again while still in midleap. Materializing behind Belasco, he lunged the instant his two-toed feet touched the floor.
As before, the man in red sensed the threat, and, his cloak swirling, pivoted to meet it, but this time, he was a shade too slow. Kurt’s saber plunged against his chest, slashed the silken fabric of his tunic, and, ringing, rebounded from his ruddy chest, leaving it unmarked. Nightcrawler stared, aghast, and Belasco chuckled.
“I’m afraid I’m all but indestructible,” the sorcerer said, “like dear little Rogue. A gift of the Elder Gods. Perhaps with luck, one of your more powerful comrades could harm me a
little, but you, imp? It’s really quite unlikely.” He twitched the point of his sword, and another magical attack, this one a seething ball made of ragged strands of darkness, popped into existence before him and streaked at his foe.
Kurt dodged it with a somersault, then flung himself into another furious attack. Over the course of the next minute, he cut and thrust at all the most vulnerable points of the human body, striving desperately at least to inflict a wound, always unsuccessfully. He wondered why Belasco was even bothering to parry. He hoped it was because it was at least theoretically possible that he could incapacitate the magician, but perhaps his opponent was simply enjoying the game.
Meanwhile, he didn’t dare stop moving for a second. He could parry Belasco’s blade—the sorcerer was an able swordsman, but no better than himself—but only by dodging, ducking, and teleporting could he avoid the flares of mystic power that the homed man hurled at him. Before long, he noticed that Belasco’s jet-black eyes always narrowed just as he cast a spell, and often, only that warning sign allowed him to displace himself in time to avoid incineration or some other ghastly fate.
As he fought, bounding and flipping back and forth, onto the massive basalt altar and off, teleporting until a haze of sulfurous smoke all but obscured his surroundings, his attention was naturally riveted on Belasco. But even so, he caught glimpses of his comrades. Colossus, virtually buried beneath a pile of demons. Cyclops, blasting a pew into a hail of wooden shrapnel that dispatched three onrushing vampires at once, fighting to protect Jean, Rogue, and the bloody, battered Logan, all three sprawled motionless on the floor. Storm, backed into a comer, now standing as if she could no longer spare the energy to fly, defending herself with howling gusts of wind. Kitty and Dracula, holding a swarm of demons away from Amanda. Each of the mutants—the ones who were still conscious, anyway—battled as fiercely as ever, yet, to the eye of someone who knew them as well as Kurt, they were obviously nearing the limits of their strength.
Which meant that Nightcrawler couldn’t teleport away, grab one of them, and pop him up here to deal with Belasco. The displacement would leave any of his fellow X-Men too enervated to be of any use. It might even exhaust Dracula, and in any case, the vampire was needed where he was. No, the best Kurt could hope for from his comrades was that they would continue to keep the army of monsters occupied. He’d have to stop the sorcerer himself.
There must be a way, he thought. There was always a way to penetrate an opponent’s defense, if a fencer only possessed the wit to see it. But as he failed with one attack after another, either because Belasco blocked them or because they simply couldn’t so much as nick his skin, as time and again, he avoided death by a hair, he couldn’t think of a thing.
His heart pounded, and the breath rasped in his throat. It wasn’t the swordplay or the acrobatics. Strenuous as they were, his trained muscles could have kept them up for far longer, had they been the only demand on his stamina. The problem was too many teleports in too brief a time. Soon he’d slow down, and at that moment, Belasco would no doubt put an end to him.
The structure of magical light above their heads blazed brighter, and even though he was by no stretch of the imagination a mystic, Nightcrawler nonetheless sensed that somewhere, an immense door had begun to swing open. Perhaps every fragile, defenseless human being on the face of the planet was sensing it as well.
Belasco laughed. “You feel it, don’t you, Wagner? They’re coming. Which means that, amusing as this interlude has been, it’s time to end it. I must compose myself to greet the new masters of the world.” His eyes narrowed, he flicked the point of his sword, and dark lightning leaped from the blade.
Kurt dodged it with a leap, displaced himself to avoid a second crackling bolt, materialized atop the basalt altar, and hacked at the crown of Belasco’s head. The sorcerer didn’t lift his sword in time to parry, and while the blow didn’t cut him, it at least knocked him off balance. Eager to follow up, Nightcrawler sprang from the graven stone block, but, even staggering, Belasco still had command of his sorcery. The mutant had to teleport in midair to save himself from yet another blast of malignant power. By the time he reappeared and wheeled to continue the attack, Belasco had recovered his equilibrium and come back on guard.
For an instant, Nightcrawler felt a surge of despair, but he thrust it from his mind. There is always a way. And as he flipped and teleported about Belasco, never still, attacking him from all sides, something caught his eye, and he prayed that perhaps he finally saw his chance.
Three more rapid-fire teleports which, he hoped, would momentarily befuddle his foe, each jump producing a clenching pain in his guts. The third displacement landed him squarely in front of Belasco, who reflexively thrust out his sword. Kurt swept the forte of his blade against the foible of the sorcerer’s, then, taking advantage of the leverage the juxtaposition afforded him, spun the other man’s weapon in an envelopement.
Unfortunately, such a prise de fer was inevitably a slower move than a simple cut or thrust, and afforded Belasco a good opportunity for a sorcerous counterattack. Even as Kurt took control of his sword, the sorceror rattled off a word of power, and the mutant, unable to complete his action and retreat at the same time, opted for the former. Once he’d tom the enchanted sword from Belasco’s ruddy hand and hurled it pin-wheeling into the nave, he leapt, but by that time a bolt of silvery light was already streaking at him. The magic caught him in the chest and sent agony shrieking along his nerves. He fell heavily to the floor, and when he tried to scramble up, found that he was paralyzed. He strained for one last teleport, to carry himself away from his foe, only to discover that he couldn’t manage that either.
Belasco bent over him, his clawed fingers reaching for the X-Man’s throat. “Farewell, Wagner,” he said.
His body, steel though it was, aching from the pounding he was taking, fiery pain throbbing in his broken leg, Piotr swept his arm in an arc that hurled two demons across the nave. That left four more beating and ripping at him: a wrinkled brown hobgoblin, no taller than a child and thin as a stick, with a wedge-shaped head, and long, barbed talons on its oversized hands; a hulking thing with four arms, whose gray hide sweated clear drops of acid; a young female vampire with black lipstick and eye shadow, clad in tattered jeans and a leather jacket decorated with studs and clinking chains; and a scaly one-eyed monstrosity that was doing its best to beat the mutant’s head in with the pointed end of a war hammer.
The goblin was so nimble that, up until now, Colossus hadn’t been able to touch it. He faked a grab at the four-armed creature, then suddenly snatched for the smaller demon instead. At last his fingers closed a
bout its waist, and he used it to bludgeon the other monster, sparing himself further contact with its corrosive coating.
The hobgoblin thrashed and squawked for a moment, but after the second blow, it hung broken and silent in his grasp. Another swing sent the gray demon tumbling backward, its tusks shattered and its snout flattened.
From the corner of his eye, Piotr glimpsed the war hammer hurtling down at him once more. Releasing the inert, flopping form of the goblin, he frantically jerked his head out of the way, and the weapon crunched into the floor. He lifted his arm to punch the one-eyed creature, but the vampire pounced on him and grabbed him by the wrist. Wrestling, they rolled across the floor.
Piotr knew the undead woman wasn’t strong enough to hurt him physically, and by now, she must know it too. No doubt she hoped either to make eye contact and mesmerize him, or to hold him in place long enough for the demon to bash his brains out. Determined to deny her the opportunity to do either, the Russian dug the fingers of his free hand into the floor, ripped up a scrap of wood, and drove it into her back. She kept struggling, so he yanked it out and stabbed again. This time, he evidently pierced her heart, because she suddenly stopped moving, and the faint stink of her undead flesh intensified into a nauseating miasma.
The hammer streaked at Colossus. He used the rotting coipse in his hands as a shield, and the weapon thudded deep inside it. By jerking the body, he managed to rip the hammer from the one-eyed demon’s hands.
Hissing, the creature scrambled backward. Evidently, despite its fangs and robust build, it was reluctant to fight Piotr empty handed. Tossing the vampire’s corpse, that was now little more than bones and slime, across the church, the mutant looked around for his next attacker. He was sure there’d be one. No matter how many monsters he defeated, they just kept coming at him, with no letup at all.
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