The Last Shrine
Posted on Sat May 17th, 2025 @ 11:02pm by Scott Summers & Bobby Drake & Hank McCoy & Kurt Wagner & Jean Grey-Summers & Alaric Thane & Pietro Maximoff & Warren Worthington III
5,432 words; about a 27 minute read
Mission:
Episode 6: X-Fernus Agenda
Location: Kamar-Taj
Timeline: January 13th, 1991
The stars thinned to pinpricks as the Blackbird knifed through the upper atmosphere, a black spear on borrowed wings. Below them, the snow-gloved peaks of the Himalayas rose like the jagged bones of the world itself, ancient and immovable.
Inside the jet, Kurt sat buckled in with the relic cradled gently in his hands. The artifact—assembled after so many trials—now glowed with a steady, pulsing light. With every passing mile eastward, its glow had intensified, a subtle yet unmistakable crescendo. He said nothing, simply stared down at the device with the reverence of a pilgrim nearing holy ground.
“We are close,” he said, softly, to no one in particular without looking up. “Zhis is vhere ze beacon leads.”
Scott kept his eyes forward, hands steady on the controls. “Good to know. Hank?”
In the copilot’s chair, Hank narrowed his eyes at the instrumentation cluster, blue fur bathed in the faint green glow of the screens. “Atmospheric pressure is stable, crosswinds are negligible, and yet…” he tapped one monitor with a frown, “… our radar has gone entirely blind.”
“Blind?” Scott repeated.
“Indeed. Something’s jamming our signal—and it’s not electromagnetic interference. The wavelength is too erratic. If I didn’t know better…” Hank paused. “I’d say it was mystical, something totally undetectable to our scanners.”
Just then, the Blackbird lurched violently to the left, the cockpit flooding with warning lights as the craft banked hard.
“Hold on!” Scott shouted, compensating on instinct. The jet groaned against the unexpected turn, metal protesting as it twisted in the air. But seconds later, they were gliding level again—rattled but intact.
“I didn’t touch the controls,” Scott muttered, his knuckles still white around the yoke.
“No pressure drop, no shearing wind, no indication of a weather anomaly,” Hank confirmed. “Whatever that was, it wasn’t from the atmosphere.”
Kurt’s fingers tightened on the beacon. The relic was now burning with white-blue light, almost too bright to look at. He blinked at it, startled. “It’s reacting to somesthingk. Zhat means ve’re getting close.”
“Jean, do you sense anything?” Scott cast a look at Jean, then over his other shoulder. “Do we send a scout? Warren, Bobby—one of you might be able to get a visual.”
“Maybe? I don’t know how much good I’d be,” Bobby pointed out. “I can get down to the ground but I won’t see anything from the air I can’t see here from the window.”
“It’s a strange sensation.” Jean replied to Scott, “it’s almost like a universal mental shield. I can’t sense anything but there is something, it almost feels like a hive of bees. Something is protecting them and they’re trying to hide in plain sight.”
“We can get in for a closer look.” Warren remarked as he got out of his seat. Adjusting the strap to his newly made metal wings, he was eager to test them out. “Bobby and I can fly down and see if we can find anything. There are too many suspicious things to ignore.”
Pietro’s fingers twitched as he grew antsy, always impatient, he had become downright cagey as they were potentially about to find his missing twin. “If you put me on the ground, I can explore from there.”
Scott tapped a few controls to steady the Blackbird’s altitude and muttered something under his breath about the dangers of magical flight paths. Then his jaw squared, and his tactical brain took over. No more surprises. Not if he could help it.
“Alright,” he said decisively, glancing around at the team. “Hank and I will keep circling at a safe distance until we get eyes on something solid while Jean stays linked with everyone.”
“Warren,” Scott turned toward the winged mutant, “you’ve got altitude. Take a wide arc over the peaks. Look for anything that casts the wrong kind of shadow or doesn’t line up with the terrain.”
“Bobby, you’re middle flight path,” Scott continued. “Drop the others to the ground, then stay close to the ridgeline. Keep your distance but be ready to drop down if you spot something unusual.”
Scott turned to Kurt and Pietro last. The heart of the op. “You two are ground team. Kurt, you’ve got the beacon, and your ability to teleport will help you react fast if something goes sideways. Pietro, I need your speed. Sweep wide, cover ground fast, and don’t engage unless you absolutely have to. We’ll ride in as soon as anybody finds something.”
Kurt’s eyes never left the softly pulsing beacon as he nodded. “Ve vill move quickly und quietly. If Kamar-Taj is vaiting… it shall not hide for much longer.”
Scott checked their altimeter and angled the Blackbird into a wide circular holding pattern above the valley. “Good. You all know the plan. Let’s find whatever's down there.”
With the bay doors opening and the frigid Himalayan wind rushing in, the team launched into motion. Warren stepped backward into the open air, diving like a falcon and climbing high above the mountain peaks. Bobby followed moments later, forming a sleek trail of ice beneath his feet as he coasted just above the uneven ridgeline, arms out for balance. Kurt and Pietro followed behind him, retracing his movements and displaying just as much ease as he did.
Once they had descended to within sight of the ground, Kurt took hold of Pietro and made ready to jump to the end. With a sudden bamf, Kurt and Pietro vanished from the blustery sky and appeared far below on a rocky outcropping near a cleft in the mountain’s base where the snow had melted in perfect concentric circles.
“I do not know vhat Scott expects zhem to see from so high above,” Kurt murmured to Pietro, tilting his head back to follow the faintest flickers of movement across the starlit sky. Against the black velvet of night, Warren and Bobby were just shadows darting beneath the glow of the moon, their silhouettes barely visible in the rarefied air.
“None of us know what to expect so he’s covering all the bases.” Pietro surprisingly defended Scott’s choice.
All around them, the Himalayas loomed in silver and shadow—serrated ridges bathed in moonlight, glaciers glowing faintly like the bones of sleeping giants. The wind cut through the pass with a whispering chill, sharp as broken glass, and the snow underfoot sparkled with a cold, otherworldly sheen.
“It must be even colder up zhere,” Kurt added, his breath curling like smoke between them.
He turned and held out the relic to Pietro, its blue-white light pulsing softly like a heartbeat in the darkness. “Here, mein Freund. Perhaps it vill reveal somesthingk hidden to you vhile you run. Just... vatch your step. Zhese mountains are notoriously unforgiving to outsiders.”
“Since when do you care if I slip or fall?” Pietro balked as he took the relic from Kurt, their relationship still remained strained at best. But before Kurt could reply, Quicksilver vanished into the whitewashed mountains.
Pietro was gone for an extended period of time, long enough that Kurt started to worry if something had happened to him. Then suddenly, Jean’s silvery voice appeared in his mind.
~* ‘Kurt, Pietro appears to have found an opening into the shield around Kamar-Taj. But when he enters it, I lose telepathic contact with him. Join him about 16 kilometers northwest of your location. I’ll share a mental picture of the spot.’ *~
BAMF!
Kurt made no hesitation. As soon as Jean give him the least bit of direction, he was off and away.
Jean paused for a moment, apparently listening to several conversations at once. ~* ‘X-Factor will remain on watch outside of Kamar-Taj, Good Luck.’ *~
Pietro stood just beyond the veil, his silver hair wind-slicked and his breath rising visibly in the frigid mountain air. The relic pulsed bright blue in his gloved hands, illuminating a space where—seconds before—there had been nothing. Now, shimmering in fractured light like a spider web made of stained glass, stood the gates of Kamar-Taj.
Kurt appeared with a sharp bamf, smoke and sulfur curling in his wake as he took in the sight before him. His golden eyes widened as they swept over the outline of the city gates, revealed only by the relic’s glow. It was as though the air itself had parted, refracted through ancient magic or long-lost science—something not meant to be perceived by those without the proper key.
“Mein Gott,” Kurt murmured. “It vas here, all along…”
Without a second thought, he reached out, grabbed Pietro by the arm, and bamfed straight through the glimmering light and into the city beyond.
When they reappeared, the first thing they noticed was the silence. Not the peaceful kind, but the unnatural quiet of a place long used to whispers. The wind didn’t whistle through the alleyways. There were no birds overhead, no clatter of carts or idle chatter. Only the slow shuffle of human figures—dozens of them, maybe more—moving aimlessly, dressed in robes of ambiguous origin and colorless cloth that resisted classification.
Some paused and looked at them blankly, like the light behind their eyes had dimmed. No children. No elders. No direction.
“Perhaps not slaves,” Kurt whispered, “but vessels. Emptied. Forgotten. Ve vould do vell to avoid zhem all ze same.”
The architecture around them was impossible to place with its stone and metal woven like ivy, archways supported by columns that breathed faint pulses of ambient energy. There were gears that turned without visible power sources, and doors that opened to gestures made by hands.
“What the hell is wrong with this place?” Pietro warily surveyed the city, it was so cold and empty. The power that pulsed through the buildings was ominous and dangerous, it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. “We should be careful, this place doesn’t feel right. I don’t think Wanda would stay here by choice.”
The relic burned brighter now, not hot but urgent. It pointed not toward the temples lining the main square, nor to the many minor keeps that pockmarked the walls surrounding the city—but to the central citadel that loomed above it all. A master keep carved into the side of the mountain itself, dark as night and utterly devoid of firelight, and yet pulsating with slow, rhythmic waves of force.
Kurt nodded toward it, his tone low and resolute. “She’s in zhere,” he said. “Zhat kind of power… nosthingk else could hold Vanda. If she is anywhere in zhis city, zhat is vhere ve vill find her.”
Pietro’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the citadel, while he often scoffed at Wanda’s ideas of the mystical realms and magic being the reason for much of the unexplained, he couldn’t deny the unearthly power that resonated from this place. “Okay, if that’s the case we go in and we get her back.”
Quicksilver took a few steps forward, the pivot of his foot indicated he was about to run but he stopped and acknowledged Kurt. “How do you want to do this? Teleport? Have me scout ahead? Or just go in together?” This was the first time Pietro had actually paused in order to consider Kurt and what he wanted to do, a subtle attempt at working as a team rather than just two men working in parallel to one another.
“A direct approach is too risky,” Kurt said, voice low, careful. “Quick und quiet.” He shuddered at the memory of Jean’s description of what had happened to the Vanisher on Krakoa. “Ze place zhat held Jean made a messy end of ze teleporter who helped Scott rescue her. Ve vill hef to do zhis carefully in stages vith no blind teleporting” Kurt smiled faintly but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I say ve bamf to the outer wall,” he said. “Zhen the ledge. Zhen ze upper courtyard, if it’s clear. From zhere…” His gaze lifted again, tracing the shadowed ascent. “Ve find Vanda.”
The courtyard atop the central citadel loomed like the eye of a storm, flanked by dark stone buildings, each shaped with impossible symmetry like they were laser cut from stone. They reached the upper ledge without incident. Each bamf was timed between the drifting lines of sight for patrols, allowing the brimstone smoke to disperse in wind-swept curls before it could betray them.
Looking around, they could see the windows were shuttered or sealed, and the archways leading within pulsed faintly with the same energy that radiated from the relic lashed to Kurt’s back.
It was quiet up here, unnaturally so.
Kurt crouched low, eyes narrowing. “Zhey do not expect company.”
He motioned toward the largest of the structures. It was guarded by two figures in dull, once-regal armor. The men stood too still. Their eyes were unfocused. Identical.
Kurt inhaled sharply. “Doppelgängers,” he whispered. “Vhat in ze name…” He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Nothing did except finding Wanda.
Before Pietro could question it, Kurt vanished with another bamf, reappearing just behind the guards. A hand on each shoulder, another bamf, and the guards were gone, dropped silently at a snow-covered ledge they would not climb back from quickly.
He returned just as Pietro adjusted his gloves, tension humming beneath his stoicism.
“Ze vay is clear,” Kurt said.
They moved inside. What greeted them was not what they expected.
A row of cells, each one framed in bars not of iron, but of raw light and pulsating energy. All were empty, except one.
The cell’s inhabitant sat quietly on the floor, surrounded by soft, scattered remnants of cloth. Her red and black tinged hair was tangled, her face thinner than it had been on Genosha. She stared absently into a cracked mirror mounted against the wall, fingers gently tracing the fractures like they were constellations.
It was Aurora. She smiled vacantly at her own reflection but didn’t acknowledge them. Her lips moved silently, caught in a conversation that no one else could hear.
“Whoa!” Pietro maintained a whisper despite his surprise “Do you remember Yakov’s parrot that he locked away for biting? He shoved it in a cage and covered it up, it screamed for weeks before going silent. That bird went crazy all by itself. She reminds me of that parrot.”
Kurt’s tail twitched. “She may know vhat zhis place really is. Und if she knows vhere Vanda is...” He trailed off. The decision sat heavily in the space between them. There was a risk in waking madness, but a greater one in walking blind. Kurt lowered his voice to a whisper. “Should ve risk speaking to her?”
“I dunno.” Pietro cocked his head to the side as he examined the addlebrained Aurora. “She might not be a reliable source of information if she is crazy. Then again, that parrot was still capable of singing Frère Jacques even after everything that happened to it… ask her what she knows but we’ll take it with a grain of salt.”
Kurt gave a small, solemn nod. “Ja… grain of salt,” he echoed. “But even madness can echo truth.”
He stepped forward, slow and reverent, keeping his hands visible. The cell’s energy bars hummed softly, casting shifting shadows across the floor. Aurora remained as she was, kneeling, tracing cracks in the wall mirror, lips whispering to no one.
But then, without turning her head, she spoke.
“Oh, you really came,” she said dreamily, still smiling into the broken mirror. “I thought maybe I made you up.”
Kurt froze. Pietro stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” Aurora continued, voice lilting like a lullaby. “For before. That wasn’t very nice of me. I was upset. It’s hard to explain when the demons are loud and the stars are whispering all the time…”
She tilted her head, then cradled the air before her like a bundle in her arms. Her voice dipped to a whisper so soft it barely reached them.
“I only wanted to keep him safe. But I lost him. All I wanted was to protect my son and I lost him.”
“I am so sorry,” Kurt said with genuine sorrow.
Aurora kept smiling that eerie smile. “Don’t be. He isn’t lost anymore. Not since he appeared in the mirror.” She turned ever so slightly, but not toward them, rather toward the space between the mirror cracks. Her eyes remained unfocused. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked, holding up her empty hands to her breasts. She rocked her arms gently, like a mother soothing a newborn.
Despite being deeply disturbed, Kurt stepped closer, voice soft, coaxing. “Aurora… ve are looking for someone. A voman, a prisoner. Do you know if zhere vas anybody else here?”
Aurora stilled. Her rocking stopped, but she didn’t lower her arms. “If they scream too loud or shine too bright, they go to the black flame altar,” she said matter-of-factly, as if explaining the rules of a game. “Sinister sends them through the fire into Limbo. He says it’s like recycling. Even garbage has its uses.”
“Zhat is so evil…” Kurt couldn’t help but condemn such an action.
“If you hurry,” Aurora added, still smiling, “maybe you’ll catch her. Maybe she hasn’t fully crossed over.” She finally blinked, first one eye and then the other. “Or… you can wait. She might show up in the mirror. Like my son.”
Kurt’s breath caught at the strange, aching weight in her voice. “Ve shall try ze altar,” he said gently. “Can you tell us vhere it is?”
She nodded slowly, finally lowering her imaginary child. “The west shrine. Look for the door with no hinges.”
“Danke…” Kurt and Pietro backed away together, moving like men inching away from a growling dog.
“That was terrible.” Pietro replied as they exited, “My father… he saw people like that in the concentration camps. Evil breaks people.” He shivered from a mixture of cold, dark emotions. Not wanting to linger in those hard feelings, Pietro turned his attention back to the mission. “Which way?”
“Vest shrine,” Kurt murmured as they took their leave. Outside the windswept citadel tower felt even colder somehow. They faced west, trying to put the memory of that encounter out of mind.
As they approached the enclosure with the hingeless door, the relic began to pulse violently, flickering with ultraviolet light that bled out from the seams of Kurt’s pack. He swung it around, unfastened the flap, and removed the artifact now blazing like a dying star.
The air shimmered like a heatwave before a wall dissolved in shadow and flame, revealing a circular shrine with a dais at its center. Upon it stood a monolith of black stone, split open at the top where violet fire danced and roared like a living thing.
“Ze black flame altar,” Kurt said, breath tight in his throat. The relic bucked in his hand, pulling forward as if drawn toward the flame. He looked at Pietro “Zhis feels like a point of no return moment. How should ve proceed?”
“Same as before, we go get her.” Pietro answered with a newfound confidence. They were so close to finding Wanda that he couldn’t bear the idea of waiting any longer. “Give me the relic, I’ll place it on the dais.”
Kurt hesitated, gripping the relic tightly for one more heartbeat. The heatless fire licked at the edges of reality itself, casting no shadows.
“Take it,” Kurt said, offering the relic with a slow, reluctant hand. “But be ready. Ve don’t know vhat comes next.”
Pietro nodded and took the shard. It pulsed in his grasp, the ultraviolet hue staining his gloves like phantom blood.
He approached the dais with cautious speed. The air grew heavier with every step, dense with pressure and something older than fear. The black monolith seemed to hum in anticipation, the violet flame intensifying as Pietro neared.
Then he placed the relic into the hollowed split atop the altar. Everything changed.
The flame erupted upward like a scream, its flickering black light edged in ultraviolet. A sound like rending stone and shrieking wind tore through the chamber, not heard so much as felt in their bones.
Shapes bent. Corners bled into curves. Pietro staggered back, shielding his eyes.
Kurt reached for him instinctively, grabbing his arm as the flame twisted violently, not a portal, not yet, but a hole forming in the center of the room, gnawing at the veil between realities.
It did resemble the portals they’d seen on Genosha, but this one was… hungrier. Up close, it wasn’t just unnatural in appearance. It felt wrong, as though it were something that had never been meant to exist.
Kurt’s breath caught. “Zhis… is not merely a gate,” he whispered. “It is a vound in Creation.” Looking at Pietro, he said, “Ve cannot risk ze both of us getting lost in ze abyss. Allow me to go first. Time is said to pass differently, ja? If I do not return visthin, let us say, eine hour, zhen come and see vhat has befallen me. I vill try to leave signs in my passing.”
“What?! I’m not going to just sit here and wait. My sister might be in there!” Pietro scoffed at Kurt’s suggestion, then he thought about the Blackbird waiting outside this city, this was more of the same. “Alright, go, I’ll keep watch out here in case someone else appears. Just… ah… be careful, Kurt.”
Kurt placed a hand on Pietro’s shoulder, eyes solemn, voice low.
“Der Herr segne dich und behüte dich,” he whispered, tracing a small cross in the air.
Then, without another word, he stepped into the flame. There was no dramatic scream, no shattering light, just an instantaneous swallowing.
Pietro stared after him, arms folded tight. He hated waiting. Waiting meant stillness, helplessness, and worst of all, imagination. But he didn't have to wait long. Just as he began to settle in, the ultraviolet flame licked the air again as something began to pass through the fire.
A shape re-emerged from the breach. It was Kurt. And he wasn’t alone.
Behind him stepped a stranger—tall, perhaps a few years younger than them both, with tousled brown hair and heavy eyes that shimmered strangely in the ultraviolet light. His clothes were tattered, scavenged from multiple cultures, and his expression was calm. Too calm. As if he had seen too much and chosen silence over madness.
Kurt looked winded but steady. The fire behind them pulsed once more, then dimmed to a dull roar.
"Pietro!" Kurt gasped, looking as though he hadn't seen Pietro in ages. "You are still here! Zhank Gott!" He bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, then glanced at the man who had arrived with him. "Und Alaric... you made it as vell..."
Alaric took in a slow, deliberate breath, held it for a beat, then let it out with quiet disdain. “The air here…it's different, almost thin. Hollow. Lacking.” His gaze fell across the forboding surroundings, expression darkening. “I don’t like this place,” he muttered, turning to face the one he'd come to know as Kurt.
“Who the hell is this?!” Pietro snapped as the two men appeared through the Limbo portal. “This wasn’t part of the plan, Kurt! Give me the relic and I’ll go looking for Wanda myself.”
Quicksilver took a step towards Kurt but before he could reach him, the portal behind them vanished and a rather urgent and glaring alarm began to sound throughout the once eerily silent city.
“What did you do?!” Pietro shouted at the pair as his body tensed into a ready position.
"It is a long story," Kurt began. "But suffice to say Vanda is not in Limbo. Eizher she never made it to Kamar-Taj or her journey led her beyond zhis place. Zhere is nosthingk in Limbo besides death und destru—"
A deep, resonant chime thundered across the city and cut off Kurt's sentence. It was a sound like temple bells struck underwater. The piercing rumble shuddered through the bones of the buildings, rattling old iron filigree and fractured glass. Then the chime broke into segments, overlapping in disharmony with sharp, shrieking howls that echoed through every spire and corridor. Lights erupted from the distant monoliths within red-orange runes streaking upward like fire climbing oil-soaked walls.
"Alarms," he said, voice strained. "Mystical ones. Zhat portal vas not meant to open again… especially not from ze inside."
There was a slam in the distance—stone upon stone, metal gates unlatching—and then came the sound of laughter.
It wasn't the laugh of a man. It was too wide, too serrated, too malevolently amused. It echoed off the stone in unnatural cadence as a misshapen, boulder-sized creature emerged from the shroud of shadow beneath the upper stairs. The Sugar Man—his grotesque quad-mouthed face grinning like a butcher's cleaver.
"Well, well, well..." Sugar Man cooed, dragging a massive axe-like blade behind him as he stepped into view, his tongue dangling over his jagged teeth. "What have we here? New toys to play with. What a surprise. I do love surprises." He heft the axe in his top pair of hands and gave its keen edge a lick with his slavering tongue, making it arc with bioelectric sparks. "You boys really shouldn't touch things that ain't yours."
Behind him, the sound of dozens of armored boots marching in lockstep grew louder, their echoes churning the air into chaos. Arcane energy surged from the towers, forming shifting sigils in the sky which were sure to draw even greater reinforcements.
Kurt straightened, pulling Alaric and Pietro closer by the wrist. "No time for furzher explanations. Ve must flee to ze gates!"
Neither the grotesque creature nor the sounds of marching upset their guest as much as the mystical alarms and energy from the towers. Then when Kurt grabbed him by the wrist, it startled him. Had he not gotten to know Kurt during his stay in Limbo, Alaric would have reacted differently.
"Indeed," said Alaric.
Pietro made a face that could best be described as a half sneer and half scoff as the Sugar Man approached them and began to bluster. His response might have been different if they had decided to stay and fight but when Kurt told him that Wanda wasn’t here or in Limbo. That revelation made Pietro’s stomach drop but he was too much of a professional to let it affect him.
“Another day and another time, Ugly.” Quicksilver said to Sugar Man before his attention turned to Kurt. “Are you going to punch it or do I have to do everything?”
With a blink of an eye and an expected bamf the trio vanished from the tower and were standing outside of Kamar-Taj. The wind and weather of the mountainside was frigid and jarring.
As soon as they left the mystical barriers of the city, Jean’s telepathic presence was felt between Kurt and Pietro. Like the well-oiled machine that X-Factor was, the Blackbird appeared without the need for further direction. Another bamf and they were inside the jet with the rest of the team.
Without a formal introduction, Alaric knew who these people were. The man flying the jet in the ruby visor was Cyclops and his blue furred co-pilot was Beast. The woman with scarlet red hair was Jean. Which left Angel, Iceman, and Havok unaccounted for. But he knew these people from the stories that Lorna had told him, from her life on Earth when her hair was green and she was an X-Men. These people had been her extended family and they had worked together to save people and better this world. This group of people were his bedtime stories that he had grown up with.
Now they were standing in front of him, examining him with looks of surprise on their faces.
Alaric couldn't believe his eyes. "It's you, but not all of you. But still, you." He looked from one to the other, calling them by the names he knew them as. "Cyclops. Beast. Jean. I'd recognize you anywhere. It's...an honor to meet those who have saved the Earth."
As the Blackbird banked away from the crumbling skyline of Kamar-Taj, the dull thrum of its engines provided a strange but comforting contrast to the chaos they’d left behind. At the helm, Scott’s focus never wavered. He guided the jet into evasive maneuvers, skimming low across the ridgelines, leaving just enough leeway for Bobby and Warren to reboard via the rear hatch on his signal.
From the co-pilot's seat, Hank disengaged the safety harness and turned toward their unexpected guest. The blue-furred mutant tilted his head with curiosity and amusement as he stepped into the main cabin.
"I haven't gone by the nom de guerre of Beast in quite some time," he said with a low, friendly chuckle. "These days it's Dr. Henry McCoy, but friends call me Hank." He extended one large, padded hand toward Alaric.
Kurt stepped closer, resting a gentle hand on Alaric's shoulder. "Zhis," he said with theatrical flair, "is zeAlaricus Tantus of Limbo."
Hank raised an eyebrow. "Alaricus Tantus," he repeated, parsing it with linguistic instinct. "Highest of all kings? That's quite the appellation."
Kurt gave a wry grin. "He did not choose it, I zhink. But ve all adapt to ze mantles ve are given."
Alaric looked at Beast's hand, unsure of exactly what the gesture meant. There weren't any friendly, peaceful greetings in Limbo. So instead, he aggressively gripped Beast's arm below the elbow as warriors of old might have done after slaying an enemy. From Alaric, it was a sign of respect from one battle hardened warrior to another. "Hank," he said simply, accounting him as a friend.
As he let go of Beast's arm and turned to addressing the others, a wry smile crept across his weary face. "I am known by several names in Limbo. But yes, I am the Alaricus Tantus. It is the name given me by Lord Belasco since birth."
"What a mouthful," Bobby quipped as he and Warren boarded the Blackbird from the rear hatch.
"Indeed," agreed Hank. "Latin is a dead language in our world, though, spoken only by erudite doctors and such." He brushed his fingers against his chest. "If others find it cumbersome, you might consider anglicizing it, such as... Alaric Thane."
As they spoke, Jean got up from her chair and examined Alaric with an intense look of confusion and disbelief. It was only when she got close enough to him that she audibly gasped.
“It can’t be…” Jean gazed into Alaric’s eyes, she knew those eyes. That soft warm brown color that reminded her of whiskey, those thick dark eyelashes, the rounded shape that crinkled in a very specific way when smiling. These were eyes that she adored and so few got to actually see, eyes that she would never forget for the rest of her days. “You can’t be…”
She reached out telepathically and brushed across Alaric’s mental signature, what she found caused her to hiccup then cry. Jean knew this mental presence, she had felt it weeks ago in Aurora’s womb. There was no mistaking that unique presence, Limbo had aged him and its harsh environment had influenced him, but at its core he was still the same person.
“Christopher!” Jean began to sob, it was a joyful but heartbreaking sound. “You’re alive.” She reached and embraced him, the sudden relief from grief was overwhelming for her. “We thought we lost you, but you’re alive.”
Scott's head whipped around from the cockpit. "What?" The visor that veiled his eyes did nothing to cover the gaping jaw that hung off his shocked face. The tall man with tousled brown hair and eyes hugging his fiancée suddenly looked all too familiar. The square jaw, the sullen cheeks, the piercing stare. It was plain once Jean called it out, and it stole Scott's breath away. "Christopher..."
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