Chapter 65- Defanging the Ice Carvers

  The Preserve- South Western Jungle- 13th day of the month of Niffle of the 6983 GR (Early Afternoon)

  Nath’aniel-

  She-Devil stood on the branch beside him as he took in the sight of the Ice Carver's st two military forts. While they were bigger than the ones the 'nazis' had, and they seemed far much less secure. He looked away from the series of walled towers, to gnce at his Lancer. Apparently, even seeing people she knew that she would do battle with prevented her from returning to her spirit form, so he understood the irritation and jealousy that she was currently feeling. At the same time, She-Devil tried to trace Psylocke as she was off ahead of them telepathically scouting their future battlefield.

  The rustling of the leaves below him was the only warring that he got before Garri, the chieftess of the Leapers joined them in the tree that they were using to spy on their enemies. Although the mage was a touch surprised when Freya joined the bunny woman a second ter.

  “Magi.” Garri nodded as she greeted him, before asking. "You have formed a pn yes?" The All Speak rune on her forehead made him hear her speak in English. Yet for some reason, Garri's voice carried Murmur’s accent.

  ‘Maybe it’s a culture thing, both the Leapers and Murmur tend to be overly flirty.' He thought before answering. “Several, but it’s more of a question of how much energy and what type I use that is the real question. Especially since my reserves of Heavenly energy seem to be quite slow to refill.” He threw a gre at Freya when he added the st line.

  “Bme them. They were the ones that started the war. We just finished it.” The goddess of the hunt said without looking back his way.

  "I was more asking the 'how' of it, than pcing any bme Lady Freya," Nath'aniel expined.

  That got the goddess to look at him. Freya looked over his face, probably trying to see if he was lying, before answering though. “Odin, with the help of my sister and his niece erected a mighty rune wall around the realm, trapping its residents and its energies inside. I believe he called it a kindness for their deeds of the past.”

  That wasn’t too shocking to him. Asgardians usually did things over the top. Honestly, the mage had expected that the Odin he remembered wouldn't stop, short of killing all of the angels of heaven, as punishment for killing the man’s daughter. ‘Then again, he was king now, and I expect that said war was already rather costly.’ He thought as he nodded in understanding.

  She-Devil's frustration peaked as he considered Asgard's god of war, and because of their bond, he wasn't surprised when she barked. "All this history is fascinating, but how does it help us take the forts?"

  Nath’aniel smiled and expined. “It doesn’t, but it was something that was bugging me, so while I waited for Psylocke to get outside of the bst zone of the spell I am about to drop on our enemies, I figured I might as well ask.” Then he raised his staff up at one of the two forts, before channeling the energies of Limbo into it. He waited till the bde was a glowing yellow hue before he started to write the rift spell into existence.

  Once it was ready to activate, he started writing Abyssal Lighting spells with his other hand. Once he had half a dozen ready he ordered. “Chieftess, have all of your forces and your allies focus on the western fort, the Asgardians will deal with the remaining troops in the other once my storm is done pummeling their walls." She nodded and prepared to leap back down, but he stopped her when he added. "Oh, and warn your people, not to touch the mists if there are any when you get there, I don't think you find Limbo very welcoming."

  Then he spped and sshed his spells into action.

  The fort on his left was hit first, the red lightning bolts having much less resistance than what they meet when striking Nazi bunkers, while above the one on his right, a glowing yellow eyeball appeared above it. The sickly yellow mist pouring out of the eye's pupil spread quickly once it hit the ground enveloping the fort and its inhabitants in a sickly fog.

  The eye disappeared in a fsh long before the fog found its limits, and the lighting continued cutting and rending the walls, towers, and defenders of the rather simple defensive structure, by the time the allied army exited the jungle and entered the clearing.

  "Look at the soldiers fleeing the castle," Deadpool shouted happily from below them, as the eastern fort began to fall in on itself from its own weight. And he was right many of the Atnteans and Yetis were charging from the smoldering ruin.

  As the sickly mist started to clear, and the fort appeared to have completely vanished, Freya asked. “Did you really dump the entire fort and its soldiers into Limbo?”

  The mage shrugged, before admitting. "Seemed like a good pce for them. Besides none of those men in there are innocent, and starvation is not the worst way to go."

  A moment passed as they watched the allied armies continue to march slowly. From the ripples in the fog, it looked to Nath'aniel that some of the soldiers camped south of the fort and wandered into the rift trying to understand what had happened.

  As for the other fort, Deadpool, Frey, and his squire already were sprinting to intercept the enemy forces before they could fnk their allies.

  "You don't know do you?" The goddess's follow-up question made him turn to look at her.

  “You forget goddess. That my eyesight is not limited by the Veil as yours is, so I am quite well aware of the demon legions that had invaded Limbo while it slept, and have mutated after having spent centuries living there. But as I said, it seemed a good pce for the Atntean scum.” The mage said calmly. His face was policed from the rage that he had suppressed. Yet still he added. "These men may not have swung the swords or spears that killed my cousins and friends, but they certainly are descendants of them. My evidence is that they now live in the cities that my people once built."

  Freya squinted at him and nodded before leaping from the tree and running off to join her brother in the battle already started. His gaze drifted towards the goddess' butt as she ran. He wasn't sure what, but something about the way it moved and held its form as she ran, made him want to rub it.

  Then his attention was brought to the remaining mutants standing at the base of the tree when Basilisk called up to him. “Nath. You want us to go join them out there?”

  As much as he wanted to wet his hands with their blue blood, he shook his head that they were not going anywhere. A chirping from his robes, made him reach inside and pull out his emitter, his life-long friend warning him of a possible enemy as soon as it was fully active.

  “I am detecting one of SHIELD’s transports making an unscheduled visit to the exchange base. I should warn you, Nightcrawler is already there checking on Bluetop.”

  Nath’aniel nodded. Both of the teenage boys of the Brotherhood had an odd friendship with the Frenri wolf that Magneto had liberated from the Nazis. Then he asked. "Can you prep a portal to retrieve us? My work out here is already done." Then he deactivated the emitter. “Quicksilver?”

  “Boss?” The speedster asked surprised.

  Nath’aniel dropped his emitter down towards the teen. “Give that to Deadpool, and let them know we are going back ahead of them. Something has come up.”

  Over the South Pole –Aboard a Quinjet- October 30, 2008 (07:17 Zulu)

  Danielle ‘Dani’ Moonstar- (Mirage)

  Dani almost attacked the man attached to the hand that shook her awake, but she recognized the his uniform and she recalled where she was after that. When the man, Captain Adams, tapped his headset, Dani pced her own set, and returned it back onto her head.

  The officer's voice was clear in her ears over the roar of the jet's engines. "We will be nding in less than five minutes, so this is your st chance for a weapons check." He expined before the team leader checked his person, as he made sure that his own gear was where he wanted it.

  "I've never had a chance to do one of these supply runs, what kind of security do they have there? Medieval-style robots like the main building?" Dani admitted as she dug out a bowstring for her longbow.

  “Just the damn wolf.” One of the other men in the squad told her.

  “More like a direwolf.” Another added.

  That made the mutant look at the squad leader confused, and with a deadly calm expression, then the man reported. "Bluetop is six and a half feet tall from foot to shoulder, and nine feet long from nose to ass. You can probably add on another two or three feet for the tall, but so far, he is the only security for the warehouse. Although sometimes either the speedster or the teleporter is there looking after the thing."

  “A boy and his dog.” A rather rough-looking agent muttered while he sheathed the knife that he had been sharpening during the flight.

  She then focused on her equipment, knowing that her powers should be more than a match for any wolf despite its size. While she did, Dani took a moment to remind them. “Remember everyone. This is not a combat opp. We move in, ask if the mage is avaible, and ask the man some questions.”

  "How much is the walking night light getting paid for this intel?" The rough-looking agent asked her.

  “Nath’aniel and the magi consider money worthless.” The mutant agent gave their prepared answer. Then all conversation paused, as the jet jerked, as it switched from teral movement to a hover, before lowering down into a mountainous pass, which they would walk to reach the supply base.

  No more words were said as the men and women donned the thick protective Arctic hoods, masks, and jackets. Then they moved double file towards the ramp at the back of the transport. Captain Adams, led them, with the rough agent right behind him. Dani was somewhere in the middle of the team with her wooden longbow at the ready, her arrow glowing with the illusion and fear that she had charged it with.

  The march was quick. They only slowed briefly when they heard an animal roar. Dani then reached out with her powers and reported that it was a por bear and her cub trying to scare away a rival, they ignored it and jogged slightly faster towards the base.

  However, as they approached it, they saw the wolf sitting in the opening of one of the three garage-style doors, with a blue-skinned mutant with a brushing said wolf. While there was a pile of discarded fur beside the two of them. However, only the veterans who had been here before noticed it, as the others stood stunned at the size of the beast.

  Even Dani was stunned, even after hearing about its size, but after seeing the thing. Those sizes were two different things, even more so for the mutant agent, as her powers transted a message the giant wolf sent her.

  “What do you want little two legs?” Bluetop asked her, his head raised from the floor so that his eyes would be level with theirs. The wolf didn't speak so much in words, but rather she saw a scene of her poking and looking around the giant wolf's den while he watched her in a steady vigil. It wasn't a threat more of a warning that she didn't belong here.

  “I wish to speak with Nath’aniel.” Dani sent back to him. Her own scene of her and the mage conversing with friendly smiles simir to the ones she had experienced when she was sent to the Citadel for Entreatment Day.

  “Ah, inside, but he doesn’t always answer.” The wolf warned her. Bluetop sent her an image of him stepping on a pte and a moment ter an image appearing from the floor, sometimes the mage appeared, but more times just a spinning hourgss. After that, the giant wolf looked at the blue mutant who had stopped grooming it.

  “Oh, hello.” The teenager said to them, once he noticed them.

  Captain Adams held up a fist, signaling to them to hold their fire. As he motioned for her to come forward, the rest of the team still moved to take their positions to make a half circle around the wolf and the boy.

  Dani grabbed her arrow by the head, and reabsorbed the charge she had put into it before she spoke to her fellow mutant. "I am Agent Moonstar, I am an Agent of SHIELD. One of our facilities was recently attacked and we were hoping Nath'aniel could give us some advice about the creatures that attack us."

  “Creatures?” Nightcrawler, that was his name, asked confused.

  The mutant agent nodded before expining. “Thanks to some information that Nath’aniel has already given us, we were able to identify one of them as an imp, a type….”

  “A demon? But the Veil should keep them out of our pne.” The boy interrupted her expnation.

  ‘Veil?’ She wondered but kept to herself, instead focusing on the present. "We don't know how they got here either, but we have a third member of their team trapped in a chamber, and was hoping that the magi could help us in this emergency," Dani expined. She then pointed into the depths of the warehouse before asking for confirmation. "Bluetop says there’s a communications device inside?”

  She ignored the surprised looks she generated from her fellow agents, instead focusing on the nodding teen. “Oh, yeah it is in the back, next to the Relocater.” He then disappeared in a sudden plum of gas.

  Even from the distance that she and the other agents who were standing behind her, they could pick up the whiff of rotten eggs the gas seemed to smell like. A moment ter, the garage door adjacent to the already open one started to rise and reveal more of the now empty supply base. The boy's white eyes stood out in the darkness when he leaned over and pointed with his three fingered-hand to the far wall.

  "It's back there. We also added a barracks-like add-on in case the weather kept you here for a time or something." The boy said as he pointed to both things the Brotherhood had added to the base.

  While she looked back at Captain Adams, the boy walked back to the massive wolf. The agents turned on some lights either on their rifles or on their person before they moved into the base proper, as they did the boy continued grooming Bluetop. Unlike when they came here, Dani stayed more in the lead, and didn’t have an arrow ready, because she figured if there was a threat inside the wolf wouldn’t be so rexed.

  “We filled the pce just nine days ago.” One of the agents muttered softly on their coms.

  “Your point?” Another asked.

  “Where does it all go?” The first asked clearly.

  “Cut the chatter.” The captain scolded them, while the mutant agent thought. ‘It goes to the Citadel.’

  While the others started to slow their pace, Dani marched right up to the raised ptform before she stepped on the button she saw in Bluetop’s message. To the others, it must have looked like she had been here before, but they knew she hadn't, and she wasn't about to expin what talking with an animal was like to them. So they shared their confused looks while a moment passed before the rge green spinning hourgss appeared floating in the center ptform.

  “Agent Moonstar, this is unexpected. How can the Magi aid you, is someone in your team injured?”

  "No, we are all healthy Citadel. However, we do need some information from the Magi." Dani told the hologram. As she knelt and pulled out her backpack to pull out her ptop, she added. "A gold-skinned man infiltrated one of our vessels, and did battle with an imp and another creature that we think might be a demon." Once the sleeping ptop came awake again, she found the image she needed and maximized it before turning the screen to face the hologram. "A third possible demon and the gold-skinned man are at rest and under guard, but we're not sure what we are dealing with, and need the Magi's advice." She waited a long moment before the hologram responded.

  “The Magi are limited in number, and many are currently busy. However, they understand your plight. Demons are as cunning as they are violent. The young master has granted you temporary Guest status, and may be accompanied by a guard into the Citadel. Viote this trust at your own risk.”

  As the AI, at least that's what the scientists back at SHEILD headquarters thought it was, gave its response, a door in the wall behind the ptform opened and a room bathed in a dim purple light stood waiting for her.

  “Rumlow, you are on babysitting duty, but leave your grenades. The rest of you, let’s check out that barracks the boy mentioned.” Captain Adams barked out behind her.

  DLRhanna