DISCLAIMER: Everyone here is Marvel's, except for Soraya, Cathleen, and Gareth.
AUTHOR'S NOTES/DISCLAIMER: Most, if not all of, the faerie references in here are from Changeling the Dreaming, or Mage the Ascension, which belong to White Wolf Publishing. No profit is being made from this, so please don't sue.
Elsewhere...
Illyana and the Mutants tumbled, hard, onto the grassy surface of the Russian's glade of power in Limbo. But the usually placid nexus of Illyana's personal magicks was anything but placid on this occasion.
A number of brightly decorated faeries, of all shapes and sizes, were running in panic from a horde of dark-armored elves, led by a towering figure in obsidian armor. At his side, a black-robed elven sorceress hurled pulses of sickly green energy at the Soulsword. As each pulse struck the blade, Illyana screamed in rhythm. An army of elves and trolls in white or other light-colored armor were trying their best to turn aside the assault, but the dark-elven warlord was a match for even the hardiest troll warrior.
"Ok," Nate muttered, "this is not my idea of a vacation."
"SHUT UP and kick some butt, Summers!" Bill yelled. Before he could plunge into the fray, Illyana's power caught the Mutants in a tattered stepping disc and hurled them from the glade.
*Oh... great...lost 'em,* Illyana thought. She teared up as the lord of the dark host struck down her troll bodyguard and friend, Ulmark of the Brotherhood of Thor. "Aethelred," she called, enraged but too weak to strike out with a blast of Primal or Pyretic magic.
The dark elven champion unhelmed, as the light elves and their trollish allies fled at Illyana's wave. *Better they escape to get help from the fae races,* she thought.
Her train of thought derailed as a black-gauntleted hand took her by the throat. "Well, the great burgess sorceress returns to her demesne," Aethelred ap Ailil chuckled mirthlessly.
His bride, the fell sorceress Angwin ap Eiluned, called, "Bind her to the dais, m'love." Aethelred obeyed, and Illyana began to feel fear for the first time since arriving.
"Remaking the Soulsword just to corrupt me will only destroy this part of Limbo, Angwin!" she warned.
The sidhe -elven -lady sniffed contemptuously. "It matters not," Angwin replied. "Once thou art broken, thou'lt open a gateway to the Motherworld which we foolishly left two years before, and the Dreamers there will be ours!"
"The paths of Glamour aren't enough for you?" Illyana snarled. "I've kept my promise to Dana, dammit! The fae who fled Earth because of the excessive Banality are free to come and go as they please, so long as they don't molest humans overmuch! And I follow the Cycle!"
Angwin sneered and said, "Not closely enough for us, daughter of Eve. Thou'lt make a fine childe of the night..."
She began her spellcasting, while Illyana began to scream again. Part of her mind, however, raced back through her memories, seeking some way out of her seemingly certain fate...
It was 2004 again, and Illyana teleported alone to the old N'garai cairn behind the Salem Center school. *The first thing Amanda did after she and Kurt moved in in '98 was to magick all the corruption out of this Node,* the girl thought. She was dressed in a simple white shift, nothing more. *Time to see if five years of lessons in the Art will pay off. Now, where's the reason for all of my magic lessons...?*
Illyana had been assailed with dreams of the Soulsword from the first night she'd spent on this Earth. Despite Amanda's attempts to pacify Limbo, the Soulsword kept running loose in the magical dimension, causing the demons there to keep hoping Belasco would return from the pit where the Winding Way had trapped him in 1998. The Soulsword also tried to corrupt Illyana mentally, prompting Amanda to teach the girl white and nature magic to protect herself. *But if I can take that on the offensive, no matter the cost...,* Illyana mused. She began to chant in Gaelic, hoping the significance of the night would bring her "faerie godmother," so to speak.
*The Winding Way has a manifestation in each culture, Amanda said. For the Celts, it was the Cycle of the year - darkness from Samhaine to Beltaine, or Halloween to May 2 for us, and light from Beltaine to Samhaine,* Illyana remembered. *And of the light side of the Celtic pantheon, the mother-Goddess was Dana. Maybe Beltaine will draw her to me... or am I risking hubris?*
To the 13-year-old's shock and joy, a tall, beautiful woman in white robes and a wreath of ash upon her head appeared above the cairn. ~Hail, daughter of the East,~ Dana smiled. ~Thou dost me obesiance and honor by calling me in the Old Tongue of my first worshippers. How may I assist thee?~
~I come before thee, in humility, m'Lady, to ask a boon. In exchange, my soul and my life are thine to command and to order,~ Illyana sent, not daring to look the powerful Goddess in the eyes. There were many such powers left in the world, if one dared to call upon them - not that the Judeo-Christian faith was any less real or potent.
~Thou ask much, but thou doth promise much as well,~ Dana said. ~What is thy request?~
~There is a piece of my soul in the clutches of a demon, Lady,~ Illyana sent. ~I would fain ask thee to help me retrieve it, and enable me to reclaim the Realm I do teleport through.~
~T'was not thy Realm to reclaim, but thou art taking responsibility for it. Thus, I shall grant thee thy boon - but thou must take those children of Faerie, my children, whom wish to flee this Glamour-poor world and grant them a home with thee in Limbo. Thou must also follow the Cycle which I set down for my folk ages ago, before the Disbelief swept the world and made Magick and Myth harder to perform and believe in,~ Dana sent.
Illyana replied, ~As thou dost command, I shall perform.~ She gasped to see Belasco appear, enraged, with the Soulsword floating between him and Dana.
"How DARE you interfere in the Elder Gods' affairs, you old hag!" the demon-mage snarled. Dana frowned and did not deign to respond. Instead, a bolt of white light left her and entered Illyana. The girl grasped the Soulsword and uttered a Word Of Power, known only to the sidhe or the Celtic pantheon.
A vaguely defined, female demonic shape tore loose of the blade, screamed, and dissolved into thin air. Before the Soulsword could follow suit, the portion of the power Illyana wielded flowed into the Soulsword. It flashed gold where it had been silver before, and she sheathed it in Belasco's heart. He screamed in abject terror, a... Thing, for lack of a better term, dragging him into the Dark beyond even Limbo's infinite reach.
~Excellent, Lightchilde,~ Dana smiled. Illyana opened a stepping disc and entered Limbo.
The hellish landscape she had been accustomed to was utterly formless; a white void, littered by the occasional stepping disc, was all that remained without the Elder Gods' influence. *Time to correct that,* Illyana thought, smiling. She jammed the Soulsword into the "earth," land, grass and blue sky flowing outwardly like a balloon. The stepping discs began to pour forth changelings - half-fae, half-mortal, beings trapped on Earth before the seperation of Earth and Faerie proper by the great Disbelief of the collective will of humankind. They bowed before Dana, who called, ~Look upon thy Queen. Her heart belongs to the land, and her soul to the purpose I have given her: defending the Dream which thou dost represent.~...
*The Dream - the Ideal!* Illyana grinned mentally, despite Angwin's ravages. She thought of all the pleasure and fun she had had with her friends, mortal and fae alike, as well as the dark times. *For that's what the Dream - the Faerie Dream as well as the Mortal Dream - is really all about. The Cycle of Life goes up and down for all of us; it's mages and the fae, who are most attuned to it, who reflect those changes physically as the Cycle shifts!* she thought.
Angwin despaired as Illyana drew strength from her past and present, calling upon her acceptance of the totality of existence to drive back Angwin's taint. "Nice... try, witch," Illyana called between clenched teeth, "but... I've been there... done that, for the past two... years and longer." To the dark elves' horror, Illyana burst her chains and whistled. The Soulsword teleported free of its' anchoring block and into the girl's hand, while the Seelie Court's warriors stormed from their magicked hiding places.
"You ready to give up yet?" Illyana asked, grinning evilly. She didn't try to fight the Glamour which flowed through her, presented as tribute from her subjects who patronized mortal artists, Dreamers, and gathered the precious substance from the works of imagination which the Dreamers produced. Illyana's fae avatar erupted forth: golden armor, pointed ears, butterfly wings, and purple-on-blue catslit eyes. A huge griffin - the symbol of House Gwydion, the ruling house of the Seelie sidhe- surrounded her and grasped the screaming Angwin and Aethelred in each of its' claws. They twisted and writhed, but fell unconscious beneath its' grasp.
The dark elves dropped their weapons and made obesiance to their no-longer disputed Queen. Illyana descended the dais and stood over the dying Ulmark. "Not today, old friend," she smiled, touching his chest with the Soulsword and casting a Heather-Balm cantrip upon him. Slowly, Ulmark's eyes opened, and he rosewith a smile.
"Thou art glorious, m'lady," he bowed.
"Old softy," Illyana teased. "Lock up those braindead twits - I'll be Unseelie when the time is right," she told her followers. "Now, what happened to my mortal friends?" She called up a scrying pool and searched all of space-time. Finally, she found the New Mutants - and paled in horror.
"Sweet Dagda!" she cried. "I've got to get to Earth before... oh, GODS, it's too horrible to contemplate!" She reanchored the Soulsword and teleported, praying to the entire Celtic pantheon that she wasn't too late to prevent total disaster.
For the scrying pool had shown nothing but the Reaper, cackling silently over a black pit in the crags of the Filchner Ice Shelf...
NEXT: Exodus' truth revealed, Cable's fate disclosed, and Charles' darkest hour... as the fate of the world hangs in the balance!