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Chapter.12.



~ “GET THEM!”~ The thirty guards that remained in the small chamber responded to the orders with obedient haste; letting rip with their laser guns but where once again met with an exchange more than worthy, not a single shot taking affect on anything more than the hieroglyphic covered walls and three unfortunate serving girls who collapsed wailing to the floor. Where as the Shadow King lost six of his increasingly dwindling protection through three well-placed optic blasts, a particularly effective blast of ice and two unfortunate decapitations via adamantium. On viewing this and their several abortive attempts to get around a strong telekinetic wall there after, he decided that seen as his secret weapon had been so effective the last time round, maybe he should deploy her again.


~ “KA!”~ Ororo, who had so far descried the battle with a zombie’s indifference, stood at her ‘masters’ side. Her body was now his, and so as he willed her to take flight, she summoned a breeze to do just that. But because the room was so much smaller, at least half the size of the main chamber that sat many layers above, it didn’t afford her much room for manoeuvre and soon all those present felt the force of the draft, even the Shadow King found it difficult to maintain his balance; gripping his bony fingers around the arms of his throne. Bobby and Jean looked desperately to Scott for direction; a clue as to what stance they should now take, whilst Wolverine continued to do battle with their aggressors for a moment or two longer, the feral rage coming dangerously close to the surface yet again. But he contrived to reign himself in this time, there was to much at stake for him to lose his rag, Ororo’s life and many more perhaps, rested on his and the X-Men’s shoulders this night; a responsibility that over the past few years was becoming ever increasing.


The respite for thought was agonisingly brief though, as they had to continue to fight off the Shadow Kings forces for he commanded Ororo’s will to create a bubbling typhoon at the low ceiling.


~ “Destroy them!”~ He yelled above the din of the battle; he didn’t care how many of his own people were killed when he ordered her to unleash it, as long as the X-Men were finished. As long as the High Priest (who was currently cowering behind Storm’s throne) he and ‘Ka’ were left in tact then it didn’t matter who else survived the deluge. And deluge was an apt description, for that was what it was when the storm crashed down on them amid thunderous noise; an absolute down pour ensued accompanied by several bolts of forked lightening and then hailstones the size of golf balls as the atmospheric pressure began to dip.


The room erupted into a frenzy of destruction that had all the hallmarks of a biblical disaster. Apart from the casualties from the lightening others were smashed through walls left right and centre by the hurricane force wind hat momentarily ripped across the room. Among the victims of this last assault were Iceman, Wolverine and Cyclops; sent flying backwards out of the room through what was once the wall that held the main entrance but was now no more than a gapping hole above a pile of rubble. Jean didn’t have chance to check if they were alright physically, she only had time to ascertain that they were still emitting active brain waves; which they all were, albeit the waves of currently unconscious minds. So it was up to her to face this alone for now. Trying to make contact with Ororo was useless; the Shadow King was infinitely stronger than her own meagre telepathy in comparison. She had to approach this from her strongest angle and that was currently her telekinesis. And in a flash of inspiration---Jean knew exactly how to use it.


Pushing herself up from behind a fallen statue of some Egyptian god where she had taken shelter when her team mates had been blown from the room, Jean concentrated on grasping the opulent energy that flowed around the space thanks to Ororo’s storm that although was dying down, still created enough excess energy to bolster Jean’s force field tenfold. Once she was satisfied that she had reigned enough of it in, Jean jumped up from behind the fallen Seth; her arms raised and pointing forwards she could feel the solidity of a stream of telekinetic energy flow from her outstretched hands. As it reached Ororo, Jean spread her arms outwards to coincide with the expanding of the field, which had now become visible to a degree. Ororo looked confused for a second, showing the first modicum of human emotion since the Shadow King possessed her, before Jean folded her arms in as if encircling someone and her telekinesis did just that; creating a bubble around Storm, cocooning her inside shell of matter and energy, made twice as strong by Jean manipulation of the weather witches own elements.


~ “NO!” ~ She screamed; the cry sounding far off from within her prison. Her naked limbs flung outwards in her mid air suspension, lightening surrounding her, trapped inside also. She tried to create a wind, only to find it somehow encased. But this didn’t stop her from persisting; and Jean knew the effect of this new experiment would only last for so long. The red head was feeling the unbearable strain already pushing her to breaking point; she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold her.


* * *


On the astral plane...


Another door...when would this end? Catherine was alone again now, apparently, the short ‘prep talk’ with the Professor was all the external help she was going to receive; it was up to her now. Sighing in frustration, she pushed angrily at the relatively plain looking door that was before her. But despite the fierceness with which she’d tried to open the door, the bulk of wood crept open slowly like it had been hit by the softest of drafts. As it swung lazily inwards, the look of bitter weariness that was increasingly ingraining itself on Catherine’s pretty features, smoothed out into one of mystified wonder. Through the ever widening crack in the space between its frame and the actual door, a wide and lofty corridor appeared. Bright, polished floors reflected the subtle light of a sunny afternoon; blistering hot sun, that tried to set the hallway ablaze from a series of floor to ceiling windows at the left hand side. But the sun was denied by a well placed sloping roof, the underside of which could be glimpsed from the large panes of glass. Once the door had opened enough to fit through, Catherine stepped into the wide corridor, glancing outside to see a sandy courtyard; a courtyard that seemed to Catherine odd when it was empty because she had only ever seen it bristling with life and screaming and laughter. A tentative smile came to her lips; it came there because Catherine recognised this place. At last, after the horror and oddity of the last hour; wondering through scenes more befitting the most ghoulish of horror films, she knew where she was. It was her home, the only place which she had ever been able to call home anyway; the orphanage.


Taking her attention away from the unnervingly eerie sight of the ghostly courtyard, Catherine looked down to the end of the hall; it was the large doors that protected the entrance of the orphanage, except, there seemed to be no small access door to the left hand side. She remembered; when they were very small, she and Abdul would sit at the end of this corridor and just stare at that small door. The portal to the outside world. Sometimes they would talk about making a run for it, waiting until one of the nuns came in from the food run, or when prospective parents, usually childless westerners, would come to check over what was on offer, they’d plot to run to freedom. Past the nuns, past the bewildered rich couples and into the blinding light that lay beyond, into the void...But mostly they and some of the other children would wait for more of their kind to come through. What poor unfortunates had fate tossed here this time, they would wonder. This door had become a kind of focal point for all the children; it was where everything came from and where everything left...



And Catherine was running for it, her pace was nothing more than a jog at first; wide brown eyes trained on the prize but as she neared it her pace sped up, the hollow slaps of her sandals resounded about the corridor, turning into a frantic tribal beat as she began to run. Faster and faster and faster, getting ever closer. There was a creak that started low and then rose, louder and louder and as Catherine got nearer the doors opened themselves to her, that blinding white light, the sun being let into shade. And she ran towards it now, she ran like she’d never run before, her flimsy footwear flying from her peddling feet. She could feel it now, the warmth, beckoning her to come to it, welcoming her with open arms. The corridor was flooded completely by the light as finally the barriers were as wide as they could go and with her eyes shut and tears that defied any emotional categorisation, streamed backwards along her face, made to flow horizontally by the speed of her pace, Catherine flung herself, body and soul into the white opening...


*


She awoke from the void sobbing for joy, back on the plinth where she remembered being last; the room almost pitch black as the torches had almost burnt themselves out. Sitting up, still shaking with the last of her revelatory cries, Catherine wiped at the tears that she had shed in the real world as well as the cerebral. She slipped off the edge of the slab of stone, noticing that the sandals and robe she had worn on the astral plain where on her here. Giving herself a moment to get orientated, she realised that the Professor was right; the answer had been within her all along and she knew what she had to do. Tired of being scared, tried of being at the mercy of other, Catherine set off to confront her father.


* * *


“Stop wasting my time, you fool!” The Shadow King was becoming agitated, the time was almost at hand for the alignment and if he missed it, there would not be another chance, not in this lifetime anyway. He attempted a quick mind blast, fully aware that it would only have a small effect. But he was certainly angered when his plan appeared to bear no fruit what-so-ever.


“I might not be as strong as you in the telepathy department,” Jean scoffed in a strained voice, as she continued to struggle with her slipping entombment of the possessed Ororo. “But I can damn well hold my own when I need to!”


“Yer not on yer own Jeannie.” Jean dared not turn her head back as she heard Logan coughing and moving about in the rubble behind her. “Bobby?” Logan climbed over a large chunk of debris to get to the face down Iceman, all the while fearing the worst for the young X-Man. But his keen eyes caught the first few twitches of a returning consciousness and keen ears the murmured moans. “Hey, Bobby---wake up!” As Logan got to his side, he gripped at the torn collar of Iceman’s uniform, pulling him over. He made a few more small moans, his face creasing like he’d just been woken up for class and the last thing he wanted was to get out of bed. But he didn’t exactly have much of a choice here! “Iceman, get it together NOW!” Logan gripped the collar at the front now, yanking Bobby into a sitting position. His eyelids fluttered open to reveal his Cerulean blue irises; the first thing to come into focus, and not for the first time tonight, Wolverine’s irate face.


“O.K! I’m up.” Bobby’s eyes squinted into narrow slits as he tried to clear the fuzz in his head. He watched Logan disappear off over the crumbled wall back into the room and then remembered that Ororo had practically K.O’d them again and wasn’t looking forwards to the fact that he was going to have to clamour over that wall and face her for a third time. As he struggled to his feet, fighting for balance on the uneven carpet of destroyed brickwork, Bobby spied Cyclops to his right; he was sat up and at a quick glance seemed to be O.K. But just as he was about to lever himself over, Bobby noticed that the T-Shirt that covered Scott’s earlier injury was soaked in blood and exposing a large area of the burnt limb. “Scott---Jesus! You O.K. man?” It was obvious he was biting at the inside of his lip to keep a check on the pain, but he gave a short vigorous nod in the affirmative anyway. “My ass you are!” Bobby laughed sympathetically as he crouched down by Scott to look at the wound. “Shit Cyclops, this is gettin’ worse---you can’t fight like this.” His brow creased as he inspected the arm closer, trying not to let the horror he felt at seeing it consume his face completely; it wouldn’t exactly give Scott too much hope!


“You can both stay here,” Both men’s heads whipped round in the direction of the female voice that came from somewhere just out of sight. “This isn’t your fight.” Catherine came around the corner like a spectral vision; white flowing gown, caramel brown face crowned by two swaths of dishevelled white hair, hanging down either side of her head. They stared speechless as their eyes followed her path through a gaping hole in the wall and into the chamber. The girl they had both met briefly all of two days ago appeared transformed; no longer a shy, nervous child, she cut a confident figure. Even her voice seemed to have aged, carrying a sagely, regal air---just the way Ororo’s did when she became Storm...Somehow, this change bade them to do as she told them, and they stayed precisely where they were.


*


“Enough of this!” Whilst pushing Ororo’s powers to the limit (the limit of what he could do with them at any rate) the Shadow King made toward Jean, intent on a physical attack where a mental one had failed. He was stopped in his tracks when he saw Wolverine leap over then wall and rush towards him; claws snapping out, eyes lit with a fury that could only have originated in Hades itself. But the King did not feel threatened and certainly was not frightened. The mind jolt may not have worked on Jean, but surely it would work on this man who was in truth little more than an animal?

The Shadow Kings eyes were veiled with that far off look for just a second as he levered for entrance into Wolverine’s mind---entrance that was suddenly non-forthcoming. Logan smiled at the bewildered horror that took the King’s face; a crocked grin that had something of a sinister quality to it. “What’s the matter bub? Havin’ trouble gettin inta my noggin’?” He tapped the side of his head mockingly as he came to a stop not half a metre away from his enemy. He’d felt that vomit-inducing ‘hand’ creeping around the back of his skull but this time he was more than prepared. The Professor’s insistence on teaching all of his X-Men cerebral defence lessons had paid off after all. But just as he was readying to make a fatal strike, which he knew he’d better do quickly because it wouldn’t take to log for him to worm his way around Logan’s very basic psychic circuit breakers, he heard two voices telling him, “NO!”


It was Jean and Catherine. Logan glowered at them both alternatively, his fist still raised, claws ready and waiting to plunge deep into the Shadow King’s chest. The vile being started to laugh, making Logan turn his scowl back to face him. “What the freak are you laughin’ about?” He seethed, pressing the claws to the emaciated man’s breast, cutting the skin just enough to draw blood; the substance looked like a black ink mark as it appeared in three slowly spreading dots through the blue silk of his robe.


He looked down at the wounds and the weapons that were still making contact with the skin at the point where the heart lay. His face stiffened as he moved his bulging gaze up to meet Logan’s equally terrifying one. “If you kill me---you’ll kill Ororo as well.”


“Bullshit!” Logan growled defiantly.


“No Logan, it’s---it’s true!” Jean had gone past breaking point and was now fighting to stay conscious as she continued to keep Ororo in stasis; the job still being beyond tough despite Storm having calmed down somewhat now that the King’s concentration was divided. “Their mind’s are linked---if you kill him, he’ll---he’ll drag ‘Ro down with him---AHHH!” Finally Jean caved, falling to the ground on her hands and knees, unable to support herself even then she collapsed to the ground completely. Ororo plummeted to the ground like a pheasant connected with a rifle bullet. She wasn’t that high up and the fall wouldn’t have done too much damage but Wolverine dashed to catch her out of instinct; just about reaching her in time, but they both crashed to the ground anyway. Logan rolled, cradling his wife to him and bearing the brunt of her impact, his back slamming painfully into the ground, metal spin contacting with the edge of the steps at the throne end of the room. But as always, his own pain was the least of his concerns as he sat up and pulled Ororo back a little. Her head flopped back and her eyes where heavily lidded in semi-consciousness; clearly her power display had exhausted her and so for now she was sated. But who knew who long for? Logan looked around his immediate vicinity, spotting a length of ruddy coloured velvet that ran at the foot of the thrones; he snatched it up and wrapped Ororo in it like a blanket. Then forgetting himself for a moment and this horrid situation he pulled her to him closer, pulling the tiara from her hair and tossing it away with obvious disgust; he smoothed her hair back and planted a kiss on her forehead, his eyes squeezed shut.


And so away from Logan and Ororo, the end game began...but none would have thought it would be over so quickly, neither would they have thought it would have entailed these two particular players.


~ “Catherine---I see you have rejoined the land of the living.”~ His words were utterly without emotion---good or bad, it was more a statement of fact. But there was something more to it than that Catherine realised as she walked slowly further into the room. She eyed her father with something like a spiteful pity as she realised the tone in his voice was dejection.


~“Something the matter---‘father’?”~ It sounded like an insult.


The King didn’t answer her, he simply tipped his head slowly back to face heavenwards, aware that at this exact moment Mercury was making its final few steps to the perfect point and the time of the Prophecy had all but passed. He could see in his minds eye, the sky atop of the temple fading into the natural black of a starless night, the storm-clouds that heralded the beginning of a new age dispersing harmlessly away. And this thought filled him with an utter rage that rose from his depths, a lifetime of plans carefully cultivated, turned to ashes. The first time with Karima had been a mishap, he’d been saved really, from carrying the mistake too far, but this time, he was so certain it would come to pass, so utterly certain...but he’d been thwarted once again. The impotence of this situation created a rage in him that he could barely withstand...so they would all pay.


~ “Will we indeed?”~

~ “What?!”~

~ “Pay.”~ Catherine intoned darkly.


The King’s head snapped back down, and he glared at his ill-begotten daughter, when suddenly he realised what she’d done. ~ “But you---you can not have, you---.”~ He questioned with a subtle cautiousness.


~ “I can and I did.”~ Catherine said coldly as she stepped closer and closer to him, finding her way across the crumbled brick and fallen idols with ease. ~ “And you will release Ororo, now!”~


~ “Will I?!”~ The Shadow King scoffed, ~ “I don’t think I will, in fact...”~ At this point he turned to where Logan still held a now murmuring Weather Witch in his arms. ~ “Seen as there is no longer any point in her existence...”~


“ARRGH---AHHHHHHH!” Ororo cried out and her back arched in a spasm as if she were in the contortions of severe pain. Logan tried to hold her but she jerked again so violently that he couldn’t keep a hold of her and she fell to the ground, still wrapped in the velvet cloth. Her eyes rolled back and she started to convulse as if in a fit.


“DO SOMETHING!” Logan shouted at Jean, Catherine, the Professor, if he was still with them---anyone who was listening. He felt a violent rage at his inability to do anything to help her. He didn’t want to grab her and try to make her still lest he make it worse, but he couldn’t just watch her agony as streams of blood started to trickle from her nostrils and more worryingly from her ears.


~ “You will stop this---YOU WILL STOP THIS NOW!”~ Catherine bellowed. It would be impossible to really describe what actually happened at this point, Logan nor Jean, nor Scott or Bobby, who at Logan’s shout had seen fit to come into the room, but remained at its edge none-the-less, could understand how she did it. All they knew was what they saw, and that was the Shadow King spinning around to face his daughter, and the look of smug cruelty dropped from his features. They locked in an intense exchange of stares for an age during which, mercifully, Ororo ceased to fit, laying still at last, passed out. Then, through this solid deadlock, the Shadow King began to tremble, minutely at first, and then quite visible shakes. Catherine’s hands balled into fists at her sides, so tight that the knuckles turned white. The shakes became increasingly violent as foam appeared at the corners of the once great telepaths mouth; it seemed Catherine was merely giving him a dose of his own medicine. His eyes rolled back, as they were apt to do when under psychic attack, and his entire frame flopped to its knees as the froth that had come to his mouth began to spurt out with disgusting jerking noises. Slowly his mouth gaped open as if he were in abject terror, a terror so horrifying that he could no longer form even noises for it and he fell forwards onto his face with a dull thump.


The confounded X-Men looked at Catherine in something like awe; save for Logan who had Ororo in his arms once more and was carrying her towards the exit of the room. But everyone else stood there, as if frozen amid the destruction and limp bodies that had been drained of all life. Jean got up clumsily from the ground having regained her bearings, though she winced at the action; the great stress on her joints hitting her full force now.


“Catherine?” The red head stepped carefully over all objects in her path as she made up the short distance between them. Coming at the young girl from behind, Jean laid her hands on her small but rounded shoulders, repeating softly whilst viewing her curiously blank face from an awkward side angle, “Catherine?”


The girl made an odd choked sound; somewhere between a strangled cough and a sob and in the tenebrous glow of the last remaining fires Jean saw a single tear glide effortlessly down a smooth curving cheek. “I saw...”


“What?” Jean barely heard the words.


Almost repeating the odd sound, Catherine cleared her throat and restated, louder, “I---I saw into him---I saw...everything.” The last word came through in no more than a shuddered whisper. Jean didn’t say anything, she only squeezed the girls shoulders as a sign of comfort; she couldn’t think of what horrors the poor child had glimpsed in that fiends cruel and twisted mind. The only comfort being that she could no longer sense hider nor hair of the man, suggesting to her that Catherine had somehow contrived to banish him to the astral plane. Quiet how she had come about the knowledge and skill to do that for now remained a mystery; the time for questions such as that would come later. Right now, there were injured X-Men to attend to and civilians to get to safety.


“Come on Catherine, let’s get you out of here.” She turned the girl from her morbid study of her dead ‘father’ to face her and with a warm smile, informed her, “Abdul’s in the hall---we put him somewhere safe.”


Those words seemed to snap her from the dazed state she appeared to be gradually slipping into, and a flash of joy and relief lit up her face with more candela than a thousand moons in their fullness. “Abdul!” She exclaimed breathlessly and ran toward the corridor that Wolverine carrying Storm and the others had long since headed for. Jean one last glance around the room, and down at the vile being; he was gone...but no one, least of all her could be sure how long for. Unpredictable threats? That was what the X-Men lived for...Not giving it another thought, she followed the rest from the room, relieved that they’d all survived...just.


*


“Lo...?”


“I’m here darlin’---just rest---just sleep.” His voice came to Ororo like it was at the far end of an underground tunnel...but that didn’t tally with the soft, cool breeze she felt caressing her face; the wafting noise of a slight wind in the open air. She tried to pry her eyes open, no easy task when ones eyelids felt the weight of lead. “Darlin’, rest---don’t try to wake up.” But after a brief exertion, her lids did open; onto an early morning sky that still contained last nights stars but also the encroaching light of a new day low on the horizon and suddenly that slight breeze became stiff.


“Put me down.” Ororo commanded meekly at first, but when her request was ignored, she reiterated more forcefully, “Put me down!” As she began to move in his sure hold, Logan had little choice but to concede to her demand.


“Wait up a minute.” Logan called to the rest of the group, who were now near the foot of the Blackbird and almost ready to board, as he set Ororo down on the sand that stirred briskly in the increasing breeze. They all stopped; puzzled as to why he had but then noticing that Storm had awoken. They watched as she scrambled to her feet, clasping at the makeshift cover around her, turning down to look at the Mastaba.


Logan stood close behind her as she looked down at the structure and it gave her a certain sense of comfort to have him close but she knew it was up to her to put the final full stop on this nightmare. After the Shadow King’s final, spiteful attack on her, Ororo had truly thought she would die; she felt as if her mind were being pulled apart from the inside out. And just at the point that she thought the fatal moment would arrive, Catherine had been there and all else ceased to matter. If she had died at that time, she would have died with the knowledge that her niece had over come the monster that was her father. She didn’t know how Catherine had come to be their but she did know that she had saved her life; pulling the King from her consciousness with an ease that she doubted even the Professor could manage. And so, from the time she had regained consciousness in her husband’s arms Ororo knew her to be safe but there was still unfinished business here. Storm stood at the top of the incline, her hair whipping in the wind, a wind which to Logan at least, was obviously not of natural causes.


“‘Ro, come on. We need to get you checked out---there isn’t time for this.” He gazed with concern at the now dried stream of blood that had flowed from her ears and had now stained her hair just below them, turning it a mucky shade of pink.


He knew what she was planning, he just knew.


“Logan, I have to---you don’t understand.” Ororo said as she continued to stare down at the pyramid. This was her opportunity to close the chapter, put away memories of old. Behind them, the others sensed this wasn’t their place to be and so they made their way on board the super sonic jet to give the pair space.


“You’re wrong darlin’.” Logan replied earnestly, stepping closer to his wife. “I know exactly how it feels to need to finish something---to shut a part of your past off.” He gripped at her arms tenderly to turn her to face him, “But yer not up to doing this right now.”


Ororo just about managed to smile at him, she appreciated his concern but her mind was made up. She didn’t care if she wasn’t physically up to the task; it was something that needed to be done for the sake of her sanity. Logan got the message as he felt the static in the air just a fraction of a second before her eyes flooded with an ‘incandescent’ white. He stepped away, realising that Ororo’s will was set, and she would destroy the tomb...even if it killed her. Turning back to face her target, Ororo spread her arms beneath the velvet, and the wind howled; the skies above turned black. The power that was flooding through her exhausted body burned; it was sapping every last bit of life in her but still the Weather Witch continued; concocting a ball of lightening so fierce as to destroy every last piece of brick and mortar that the building was constructed from, Storm held the tempest in place above it. Through her mind flashed the images of her family, just like they had on her first confrontation with the Shadow King, before she’d ‘killed’ him. But they were of a more positive nature this time for she had found so much to live for, and so this would be her chance to say a true goodbye to them and her past. With that ‘prayer’ on her lips, Ororo let go, feeling like every spark from the lightening, every ounce of energy in the wind was being pulled from her, and as she cried out with its force tearing her apart, the storm erupted into the Mastaba, exploding the whole kit and caboodle. She screamed and she screamed as the temple became nothing more than a pile of rubble, unable to let go of the fire inside her until she had no choice and her body decided for her. There was simply nothing left to give...


~The epilogue~





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