In the other image, a pteranodon-man wandered aimlessly across the Savage Land, barely aware of his surroundings and completely unsure of his own identity. He skirmished with wild pterosaurs during attempts to scrounge food from them. He was harassed by velociraptors, lions, jackals. He sat exposed in the frequent, monsoonlike downpours, all because he had forgotten how to take shelter from inclement weather. He was tortured by fragmentary reveries of battles fought or of a blonde, vibrant lady that he had loved with all his heart. What he endured was not life; it was merely existence.

The Sauron currently sharing the cavern with Psylocke abhorred the prospect of reverting. Even more than the shame of taking up life as guilt-ridden Karl Lykos, he feared a fate like that of the drunk in the Brooklyn gutter—-a victim, useless to anyone including himself. That’s all he had been. A homeless automaton. The Savage Land’s own version of an enfeebled psychotic who had forgotten to take his medication and could no longer recall his address.

Sauron closed his eyes, sighed, and when he opened them, he was smiling grimly, like a soldier after a firelight, who has checked himself carefully and discovered that none of the blood on his fatigues is his own, and that he truly has survived.

Betsy gritted her teeth in annoyance. The crisis had passed.

Had she possessed her powers, she was certain she could have pushed him over the edge somehow. The third personality lacked the spectral anchors typical of organic astral selves. It was artificial—truly just an overlay. Brainchild had somehow managed to make it dominant, but that did not mean it was securely attached, nor as durable as the others.

She recalled the probe she had made of Lupo’s mind. Amid those glimpses she had seen Brainchild studying books and texts on computer screens that Magneto had provided. One of the book titles finally came into focus: The Three Faces of Eve. The tale of the very first diagnosed case of what became known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Psylocke had read it more than once. Not only was it a seminal account of that odd, rare condition, but it spoke to the nature of, minds in ways telepaths needed to comprehend in order to gain proper mastery over their power. Charles Xavier had a first edition in his library. He valued it so much he had gone to the trouble of reacquiring the book when Sinister’s destruction of the mansion had torched the copy he had owned prior.

Eve suffered from a Jekyll/Hyde existence, spending part of her waking hours as a meek housewife, and part as a licentious, irresponsible barfly. Her therapist had molded a third personality possessed of the moral high standards of the first, with the willpower and imagination of the second. The fusion worked, not only curing the patient, but making her happier and better adjusted than she had ever been. Dr. Leonard Samson had recently performed a similar fusion with Bruce Banner, aka the incredible Hulk—perhaps the most famous sufferer of MPD.

Brainchild had taken it upon himself to serve as Sauron’s therapist, setting into motion a treatment program that mimicked what psychiatrists such as Samson had been doing for a generation. The mutate was recalling that herculean effort at that very moment, allowing Psylocke to telepathically sift the story out of him. Sauron had not been a cooperative or typical subject. The “melon-headed savant,” as his master had called him, had been unable to make real progress until he had rebuilt and modified Magneto’s telepathic teaching devices and created an artificial prime self for Sauron via technological manipulation. The new Sauron was not a true identity at all; he was the old Sauron, playing an assigned role, with a script running constantly at the verge of awareness. Like a method actor who has rehearsed his lines a thousand times, Sauron said the right things and did the right things and, because he believed them to be functions of his own choice, he provided the will and leadership that the brood required.

As Hank would say, Whatever works.

Now, how to make the actor step off the stage? The inhibitor collar prevented her from attacking the construct directly. But psychic brute force wasn’t the only means to victory. Psylocke dipped into her trove of battle knowledge and strategy and concocted a plan.

But did she dare set a counterattack in motion just yet? The timing seemed propitious in that Sauron was still thoroughly energized. His repressed selves were clutching more bits of vitality from the matrix with each passing minute. A nudge in the right place, and they might be able to break loose. But was that desirable? If Sauron’s true self came out on top, he would be as deadly as this one, if not more so. If Karl Lykos emerged, the mutates would restrain him, and the X-Men would be no closer to liberty. If both rose up and engaged in a fight for dominance, the resulting lunatic might become so volatile and uncontrolled that he would kill the captives, either by accident or as part of some irrational, homicidal impulse he couldn’t control.

Let sleeping pteranodons lie?

Betsy. Warren’s mental voice interrupted her deliberation.

Yes? She glanced toward her lover, who tilted his head toward Iceman.

Bobby’s been trying to tell me something, but I can’t lip-read well enough, and the guards are watching us too closely to be more obvious with the attempt.

Iceman was still groggily holding his head up, spared another blackout thanks to the premature end to the energy pilferage. Betsy caught his eye, nodded at him, and eased open a telepathic channel.

My power’s not completely dampened, she explained. What is it? What can you tell us?

The initial contact swam with impressions of pain. Betsy helped him shift the worst of that aside and generate a clear transmission. Her mind filled with the whole story of the past twenty-four hours, from the fruitless chase after Amphibius to his own capture by the main horde of mutates. Her heart leapt when she came to the part about Hank and Sam splitting off to search for Sauron in the higher elevations. She knew from scanning Brainchild that that was exactly where this prison cavern was.

Thank you, Bobby. This is excellent news.

If help was imminent, that erased her questions of when to push Sauron. The time had come. She withdrew, composed her message, and prepared to alert her comrades one by one—her weakness still did not allow large-group telepathy—so that they would be ready to do their parts.

Her fists closed.

Warren listened to Betsy’s plan and knew exactly how to do his part. He bid her telepathic presence a fond farewell and watched the expression of the others subtly shift as she relayed her communique to each of them in turn.

Sauron, for his part, was not cooperating with their hopes. He turned from his consultation with Brainchild and the others and ambled back among his captives with confident, almost bouncy strides.

“Quite a refreshing development, when I stop to consider it,” Sauron declared. “My larder is so abundant, I have to go on a diet.”

Brainchild and Amphibius laughed with him. Stiffly, Warren thought. Like children whose abusive father has just made a joke, but who are never quite sure when the hand Will rise again to slap them.

“I hardly need to capture any more of you,” the villain continued. “It would only encourage me to overeat still further. Bad, very bad, for my health.”

“You won’t catch any more of us, bub,” Wolverine said.

“Now why would you say that?” Sauron asked amiably. “When I and my fine helpers have proven so effective against the rest of you?”

“Just a hunch.”

Sauron reached out with a talon and scratched the stubble on Wolverine’s chin. Logan lunged. The straps around his shoulders limited his head movement to mere inches. His teeth snapped shut just shy of Sauron’s retreating figure.

Sauron chuckled.

Logan spat. The glob landed squarely on his enemy’s beak, right between the nostrils.

Barbaras rushed forward and raised both right fists to pummel Logan. Sauron permitted the first pair of blows to land—

%-mm

one on the X-Man’s jaw, the other in his midsection—before he gestured his lackey away.

“When next I am in need of a repast, I will sup upon your lifeforce,” Sauron announced. “And if I do so more abruptly and painfully than usual, think of this incident.”

“You know, my cheek’s Weedin’ inside now,” Logan grunted, voice constricted by pain. Archangel estimated that Barbaras’s attack would have broken Logan’s jaw and three or four of his ribs, had his teammate’s bones been capable of breaking. What it had done to his flesh was ugly. Sometimes Warren could not comprehend Logan’s tolerance for bodily mayhem. Especially at times such as this, when his healing factor was negated. ‘ ‘Get in range again and what I spit will be red.”

“You are pathetic,” Sauron replied. His tone was still superior, his attitude generally unruffled, but Archangel sensed the first hint of impatience. A seed. Now to make it grow.

“You’re as worthless as when your mind was fried, green-beak,” Logan continued. “You need crib notes to figure out which is your tail and which is your—”

“Look who’s talking.” Sauron cackled exuberantly. “Over the course of your life, you’ve learned far more about losing your mind than I. Or do I have the reports wrong? Did you have a mind to begin with?”

“I had enough brains to outsmart you last time we tangled,” Wolverine said. “And—”

“Enough,” Sauron snapped. “You bore me.” He leaned forward, radiating hypnotic power from his eyes. “I command you to be silent!¹’

Wolverine shut his mouth. His Adam’s apple quivered with the words he would have said, and his eyes pro-

jected a new stream of insults, but no sound leaked out of him.

Warren gnawed his inner lip, waiting for his opportunity. A little more patience. Just now, it was Ororo’s turn.

“Not everything has been proceeding according to your design, has it?” Storm asked. “I saw the frustration in your servant’s expressions when they brought Iceman in. You expected the Beast and Cannonball would fall with him.” Sauron’s pupils glinted. “And if I did? It is of no concern that they are free. Merely a nuisance to set the trap twice. Should I be afraid? The Beast is the least super-powered of all the X-Men who came to the Savage Land. Cannonball is but a stripling. I once popped his bubble just so.” The creature set the sharp, sturdy tip of a wing to Ororo’s bare midsection, pressing lightly enough to avoid drawing blood, but firmly enough to inflict pain.

“All the more reason to be worried over how he feels about you now,” Storm countered.

“I prefer enemies with whom I am acquainted,” Sauron retorted. “Look here.” He drummed his fingers along Archangel’s well-muscled belly. “The more I see of our special Mr. Worthington, the more I appreciate his nature. Here he is, blue and surgically altered, and yet still the same frightened child I met all these years ago.”

The villain had spared Warren the need to call attention to himself. “And you are the same old fool you’ve been all along. It takes two of you to make half a person.”

“So says the would-be hero with a plethora of extra identities of his own. Angel of Death, carefree playboy, bench player on a multitude of teams. You are nothing, Warren Worthington, when placed against me.”

The longer the conversations went on, the cockier Sau-ron’s boasts became. Like the old days. Like the enemy the X-Men had defeated more than once.

“Try me,” Warren challenged. “Here I am, drained and collared, and you still can’t take me down all the way, unless you kill me.”

“You think not?” Sauron asked ominously.

“Master,” Brainchild called. “He is only trying to agitate you. It is not... productive ... to let him do so.”

‘ ‘Keep your place,’ ’ Sauron commanded. ‘ ‘If you want me to ’relax,’ my friend, so I shall. In good time. When I have concluded the day’s entertainment. I am not agitated.”

A lie, Warren heard Psylocke say in his mind. He didn’t need her input to know that the villain was feeling the stress.

He gave Betsy a non-corporeal hug. She would be with -him continually now, not just through the psionic link, but with her regular telepathy as well. As much as she could muster. What better support to inspire him to put his head into the lion’s mouth?

“I long ago took your measure,” Warren quoted. “And found you wanting.”

“You have earned yourself a new dose of humiliation,” Sauron hissed. His eyes danced with the slight wobble they exhibited whenever he used his hypnotism.

Warren would rather have endured one of Vertigo’s nausea-provoking assaults than have to face those eyes again. Spears of mental force jabbed deep into his brain. He fought to remember to breathe. His heart kept beating only because he concentrated on the rhythm. He couldn’t feel his extremities, much less command the limbs to do anything.

But the link to Psylocke held, a bright filament around which he could anchor his courage. He tried to send her a message, even a single word or image, but could not. No matter. It was enough to know she could send something to him, when the time came.

“You will do exactly as I say,” Sauron said. “I am going to release you. When you are loose, stand and wait for your next instructions. Do nothing else.”

“Master...” Brainchild began.

“Release his bindings!” Sauron insisted.

Brainchild cringed. He waved two of the guards forward. They tilted the slab to vertical and began unlatching the shackles that kept Warren trapped. As each curved metal band was lifted away, Archangel attempted to defy his instructions. He had been ordered to stand, so he would try to collapse. That was what he felt like doing anyway.

The resistance was tremendous. Warren’s spine remained straight as a board. His knees did not buckle. But he knew he was making some sort of headway. Psylocke’s voice murmured steadily deep down, not drowned out as he had feared would happen. He was conscious of wanting to disobey, even if he couldn’t get his body to accept his directives.

During his battles with Sauron, the hypnosis had been devious, sneaking up on him and causing him to do things before he was aware of the influence. This time it was stifling and twice as powerful, but he found it easier to fight back, because he could devote his effort entirely to the mental side of the altercation. In the thick of the airborne engagements, he had been unable to make full use of the psionic countermeasures Professor X, Jean Grey, and Betsy had schooled him in over the years.

His head dropped.

“Straighten up,” Sauron commanded.

Warren lifted his chin from his chest. When the guards set him on the stone floor and backed away, he remained upright, as requested. He couldn’t defy one of Sauron’s direct orders, but he had proved he could whittle around the edges of obedience.

‘ ‘Go to the well and fetch me a dipper of water,” Sauron commanded.

Warren set out for the side of the chamber where Pibah had acquired the supply with which she washed the captives. He searched for a means to resist. Ah, yes. Sauron had not said how quickly to travel. He slowed his walk to a tortoise shuffle.

“Faster!” Sauron yelled.

He sped up. But Sauron did not say by how much, so he merely doubled his pace. That was still as slow' as an old man with a cane.

Sauron did not demand another increase. Repeating the order would make the villain appear as though he lacked total control over his subject, and he didn’t want to fuel that impression. Warren chuckled inwardly, knowing his resistance was creating a fly buzz in the creature’s pterosaurian ears.

“Be sure you fill the bucket,” Sauron said. He had anticipated the X-Man’s next act of defiance, which would have been to fetch only a spoonful. No matter. Warren would just have to think of something else.

Ahead lay a discarded possum rib that one of the guards had been gnawing on earlier. Warren adjusted his gait so that he would step on it-—seemingly demonstrating that he was unable to direct his own actions, but actually reinforcing an advantage. The bone dug into his heel, cutting only slightly into his skin but producing a sharp twinge. The pain distracted him, thereby pulling him further from Sauron’s mental whispers.

He sensed the observation of his comrades, silently cheering him on. As agreed, they were not harassing Sauron, tempting though that might be. Far better to let any failure of his hypnotic coercion seem to come entirely from a single opponent’s rebuff. Assistance was only valuable if it were a secret, like Psylocke’s telepathic bolstering.

Warren lowered the bucket into the well and raised it again. He left it full to the brim, so that water splashed on the limestone, the messiness serving as a metaphor for Sauron’s handling of the situation.

“Fill a dipper and bring it to my lips to drink. Do so respectfully, spilling none, with a smile on your face.”

You don’t have any lips, Warren thought, but he did as asked. Sauron was growing careful not to leave room for sabotage in his instructions.

Sauron slurped noisily, dramatically, and turned to grin at his other captives. “You have been a dull audience, but I can’t tell you how gratified I am that you have witnessed this. Think of it as a demonstration of the way things will be for the rest of your pitiful lives.”

The mutates burst into applause. Warren was certain he heard a collective sigh of relief beneath all the clapping.

“Very good, Mr. Worthington,” Sauron said. “Now lean yourself back against your slab and let my assistants fasten you down again.”

Now, Psylocke said. Warren felt a pulse of new mental energy. It seemed to soak into his heart and grow richer.

Warren spread his wings. To do so required only an instant of control; Sauron could not possibly suppress him each and every moment. With the wings unfolded, the guards could not position him against his platform.

“Close your wings!” Sauron rasped.

He wanted to say, “No,” but that required strength he didn’t have. Keeping the wings apart, however, required only that he tune out.

On cue, Psylocke shut down Warren’s voluntary muscle control. It was something he could not have managed on his own, nor could she have done it without his cooperation unless she had wielded her psychic knife. But together, even as weak as they were, it worked.

It was a gamble. It risked tipping Sauron off that his enemies were commingling their efforts.

But Sauron did not pause to reflect. “Fold them! Now!” he shouted.

Warren could not have tucked his bionic appendages now even if he had wanted to. His body remained frozen even as Sauron leaned in and focussed his power to a pinpoint.

Agony. Warren recoiled mentally. The onslaught of compulsion came through in vivid, irresistible waves, unhindered by his paralysis. Within a heartbeat all he wanted to do was ©bey. Unable to do so, he could only suffer.

When he didn’t get the result he was after, Sauron screeched maniacally. He raised his talons.

We did it, Psylocke transmitted to Storm. He’s fallen into a chaotic mental pattern. Time to break off before he suspects what we ’ve been up to.

Betsy released the block in Warren’s hindbrain. Instantly his wings snapped shut. He flopped back against the slab. The relief was so acute he moaned.

Sauron’s hand slowed as it came down. His nails dug shallow gashes down Warren’s naked chest, but did not lay open his sternum as it would otherwise have done. The villain stepped back, regarded the blood on his fingertips, and scowled. His bushy eyebrows rendered the expression almost comical, but Warren wasn’t prompted to laugh. His enemy was shaking, on the verge of some sort of explosion, held back only by the absolute need to believe he was in command.

Should he follow through? It would be suicide. But if that’s what it took to finish the job ...

“I long ago took—”

“Be silentl” Sauron shouted.

Warren’s mouth closed. There was no defying the order. Had those few words been enough?

No. Sauron turned and paced down the row of victims, glaring. He jerked and mumbled in answer to inaudible conversation, but his breathing grew steadier. Brainchild’s apparatuses in the ceiling were emitting a psionic lullaby again, this time strongly enough that even a non-telepath like Warren heard the hum.

“What is wrong, O high lord and master?” Ororo mocked. “Could it be that Archangel was the stronger, after all? Are you so afraid of his mere words?”

Sauron clutched for Storm’s throat, only to bruise his hand against the inhibitor collar and the shackle that stood in the way. The obstacles saved her larynx from being crushed. “So it’s true?” she asked. “You are afraid.”

“Don’t listen to her, Master!” Brainchild yelled.

Sauron whirled toward his underling. “Do not use that tone with me! I am Sauron! I am the engineer of this victory! They cannot defeat me!”

“Then prove it,” Ororo said. “Let Archangel speak.” Sauron closed his eyes, shuddered, and flapped his hand and wing dismissively. “Very well. Speak if you dare, Worthington. Say whatever you wish.”

The manacles of the compulsion fell away. The ball of invisible cotton that had filled Warren’s throat came up in a huge cough.

Warren knew exactly what he wanted to say. With his opponent finally prepared to listen, the X-Man proceeded sedately, composing his message step by step.

“I remember a woman. She was blonde and strikingly beautiful. I remember being enchanted by her bone structure. Almost elfin, I guess you would call it. Narrow chin, a soft, smooth throat, collarbones so gracile I was afraid they would break if I should shake her hand too hard. But she wasn’t weak. I saw her trudging hardily along a snowbound trail that would have wearied an experienced mountaineer. I was there when she hiked across the Savage Land, being chased by giant reptiles and flung off cliffs, and still she kept going. All to find and help the man she loved.”

Sauron stood rigid in front of Archangel, gazing back balefully but without applying his hypnotism. Warren had the distinct sensation his listener was attending to happenings far away, either in space or in time.

“Tanya. Yes, yes,” Sauron said impatiently. “Psylocke already tried to roll that subject in like some sort of Trojan horse. Is that the best you can do?”

“She was unswervingly loyal to you, Lykos. Never stopped worshipping you from puppy love all the way up to sharing an apartment with you in Greenwich Village. In spite of all her father’s opposition to the romance. In spite of all that time you hid from her down here by the South Pole. She used to drop me notes every once in a while, did you know that? In every one she would tell me how happy your lives were after the Professor managed to chase your mutate virus into remission. Seems to me she mentioned the two of you planning on having a child.”

“That is past. Part of another reality,” the monster said in a monotone. “I am not Karl Lykos. I never will be again.” “Why should that change your feelings for Tanya Anderssen?” Warren responded. “At first, even in your Sauron form, you craved her love. You cared for her safety.”

“I spent my youth trying to be worthy of her love. Yet when my power manifested, she refused to see how much better it made me. She wanted only that pathetic weakling. She was a fool. What does it matter if there is one less fool in the world?”

“It matters,” Warren said. “I know you still love her. You try to deny it only because of the guilt you feel. If not for you, she would be alive. So much easier for you to pretend she never existed, or if her face turns up in your mental yearbook, you turn the page as fast as you can, ignoring the stains of your tears upon her picture.”

“I didn’t kill her,” the monster said hoarsely. “The Toad captured us, made me do it. I had no choice.”

At last, he was cracking. Warren licked his dry lips and kept pushing. “Oh? I thought you said you didn’t care. Thought you were proud of how you sucked every last bit of lifeforce from her cells.”

“I—”

“Well, which is it, Lykos? Are you glad she’s dead, or do you mourn her after all?”

“I am not to blame!” he replied sharply. “If not the Toad, then it is you X-Men who opened the trapdoor through which she plunged. Your mutant energies made me Sauron in the first place. And you—Angel, Archangel, or whatever you want to call yourself—you brought Tanya here to the Savage Land when I had come to terms with my curse. You brought the two of us together that time. Her ultimate fate is a result of your actions.”

“Don’t think I don’t lie awake at night sometimes, thinking of that,” Warren said solemnly. “I tried to talk her out of conducting that search. Tanya was unstoppable. You know that, Karl. She would have come without me. The only thing that could have stopped her from being reunited with you, was you. And you stopped her, Karl. Forever.”

Sauron opened his huge mouth and hissed. Warren was certain he was looking at his own demise. He suddenly felt his nakedness. One thrust of a wingtip into his viscera, one talon slash into his jugular vein, and he would be the latest X-Man to die. Sometimes the team joked at all the members who had eluded death when it seemed inevitable, but it was no joke. Warren was not the deathless horseman of the Apocalypse he had once posed as. Mutant or not, he was mortal. His time would come. Was it now?

Psylocke’s voice suddenly filled his mind. We lost the momentum, she reported. He started stabilizing as soon as the subject of Tanya came up. Brainchild must have realized that particular guilt was his worst weakness, and constructed some sort of extra safety net.

Warren blinked. So prepared for a physical assault, he found it a shock to feel his future open up ahead of him once more.

Sauron turned and stalked down the row. With each step he grew more steady and composed.

“No, I will not defeat myself again,” the villain said passionately. “I have come too far for that.”

Brainchild whimpered with relief. Ka-Zar and Shanna and Ororo all released the breaths they had been holding. It appeared nearly everyone else in the room had been primed for the murderer’s lunacy to explode into full blossom.

“I detect an odor of trickery,” Sauron said. He stopped pacing when he came even with Psylocke. “Brainchild ...” he murmured.

“Yes, Master?”

“Your inhibitor has a flaw. This witch has somehow managed to awaken a spark of her power.”

The little mutate swallowed hard. He checked a display on his monitor. “It... is possible, Master. I did tell you last month that I couldn’t be certain the inhibitor would fully dampen a telepath unless I had a telepathic ally to check my work. Whatever she may be doing is very muted, my lord.” “But it has been enough to give this group an advantage 1 did not anticipate.” Sauron leaned toward Betsy, tonguing the sharp edge of his lower beak. Warren was reminded of a cat grooming its fur while it contemplates pouncing on the gopher it has just cornered far from its burrow. “Hasn’t it, my dear?”

“Need a toothpick?” Betsy jeered. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t have teeth.”

Sauron guffawed. “It gives me such pleasure to hear such gumption, and know that it gains you nothing whatsoever.” Warren was discouraged to see the vivacious humor characteristic of the new Sauron surfacing once again

“Except self-respect,” Psylocke replied. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Sauron didn’t deign to respond. He placed his face directly in front of her and began generating a fresh hypnotic spell.

Betsy closed her eyes. He lifted the lids and succeeded in locking her gaze to his. Betsy’s telepathic expertise and ingenuity couldn’t compensate for her depleted level of power.

“You will destroy whatever mental construct you made that allowed you to circumvent Brainchild’s inhibitor device,” Sauron said. “Do it now.”

Psylocke cried out. Lines of strain deepened on her forehead and around her eyes. Inside Warren’s mind, the link to his beloved abruptly snapped. The recoil careened through him like one of Vertigo’s blasts. Where there had been a comforting, constant whisper and glimmer, now there was a silent void.

Archangel fell unconscious. Awakening almost immediately—he guessed two or three seconds later—the shock was replaced by an ache. The adjustment reminded him of the return of the ability to see objects in a dark room after a bright lamp has been shut off. Enough input to function, but never enough to make up for the deprivation.

Warren filled his eyes with Betsy’s face, since he could no longer fill his mind with her presence. But that was like looking at a photograph, instead of touching the real person. He choked down bile. He would have wept, except that would have given Sauron too much satisfaction.

Betsy had been knocked out as well, more profoundly. She stirred later, and took longer to open her eyes. Her glance darted toward Warren. Seeing that he was all right, she turned and gave Sauron a glare full of more hatred than Warren had ever believed her capable of.

Sauron nodded, smiled, and checked the other captives. They bore the grimaces of psychic backlash, though not as severely as the two lovers. The villain hummed jubilantly.

“Such treachery deserves a special reward,” Sauron declared. ‘ ‘Since it seems I have more than enough mutants to sustain me for the indefinite future, perhaps I am better off without the lovely Ms. Braddock. Who knows what sort of deceit she might manage? I do not take kindly to being agitated the way I was just now. I think I shall kill her. Yes. Quite slowly. We have the means to prolong her agony. Lupo or Brainchild would appreciate a little ... sport.”

“No, Lykos!” Warren shouted. “If you want one of us dead, take me.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Sauron retorted. “I want to watch your expression as your lady is whittled down, one bone or strip of flesh per half hour.” He pranced over to the group of mutates. “Shall we begin?”

“Master,” said Gaza, “shouldn’t we wait until we’ve caught Cannonball and the Beast?’ ’

Sauron frowned. “Ah. Those two. I had almost forgotten. I see no reason not to have our fun here and take care of that loose end at the same time. That is, if for example you, Barbaras, and Vertigo want to miss this wonderful oppor—”

The cavern began shaking.

“What?” Sauron blurted.

A deep ramble cascaded down the large tunnel that led to the cave opening. Guards suddenly burst into the chamber, eyes wide, shouting. The noise of stomping feet and elephantine trumpeting drowned out their words.

A stampede of mammoths crashed into the room, sweeping aside warriors, bales of food, random pieces of equipment, and anything else in their way save the sturdy array of platforms on which the X-Men resided. Sauron squawked and shot upward so suddenly he bumped his head against the side of a stalactite. Brainchild ducked behind his console, joined by Vertigo. Amphibius hopped away, Lupo scrambling in his wake. Gaza and Barbaras tried to meet the charge head on, but even their strength paled in comparison to the beasts—they barely vaulted atop sets of tusks in time to avoid being squashed.

Warren’s heart began pounding hard. “Yes!” he cried.

Logan grinned. “Incoming!”

Right behind the last mammoth, roaring and swiping at their woolly ramps to urge them to top speed, came Zabu. He broke off once the huge animals were all in the chamber, attacking guards directly. He roared at Ka-Zar.

Ka-Zar roared back.

Zabu was barely out of the way when a blue-yellow blur rocketed onto the scene.

“Over here, Comball!” Wolverine shouted.

Cannonball had just enough time to catch sight of his bound teammates before he rebounded off the far wall and aimed for the console. Or, more to the point, aimed for Vertigo, the mutate who could throw the biggest monkey wrench into the rescue attempt if she had a moment to apply her talents. He knocked her down just as she was starting to rise. Brainchild eluded him, but the console did not. It shut down with a flash of sparks.

“Good boy, junior,” Archangel said to himself. “Got her.” And he had wiped out the inhibitor field. The collar around Warren’s neck ceased its subtle vibration. A whisper of power and strength awoke deep inside his body.

Sauron swooped and bashed at Sam on the next rebound. Cannonball’s kinetic envelope protected him well as ever, but the impact sent him bouncing to a far comer. Sauron was thrown into a loop-de-loop.

They had to take the green-winged freak out of action, Warren knew. If he got enough of a break to apply his hypnotism, he could make Sam drop his blast aura. Warren tensed against his shackles, fervently wishing one of his teammates happened to be the Thor or the Hulk.

“Have no fear. Dr. McCoy is here!” called a gruff, wonderfully familiar voice. Warren hadn’t seen the Beast race into the cavern, but there he was, bounding to the platforms. He went straight for Wolverine, freeing the Canadian’s wrists to allow a certain set of adamantium claws the freedom to slash.

Snikt! The blades burst from the backs of Logan’s hands. He grinned ferally. “Payback time!”

<s

CHAPTER 14

As Wolverine slashed away the rest of his own shackles, the Beast leapt toward Shanna’s platform. A warrior who had somehow eluded the mammoth stampede was rearing back his arm to bash her with a stone axe.

“Unpleasant dreams,” Hank said, and slammed both feet into the brute’s chest. The opponent crashed onto the stone floor, .emitting a satisfying grunt of pain and rolling into a limp pile.

Keeping alert for more such unwelcome harassment, Hank hurried to unlatch Shanna’s cuffs. He had intended to free her and Ka-Zar next anyway, reasoning that they were the most helpless while trapped. Storm, Iceman, and Psylocke could use their powers even before being freed, and Warren could probably toss a wing blade or two, but the two nonmutants were sitting ducks.

“Remind me to kiss you later,” Shanna said. She grinned at Hank, slid to the floor, and picked up her assailant’s axe, which he had “misplaced” during his tumble. She hobbled toward the group of guards that Wolverine was bloodying. Hank was sure her feet were still asleep from being bound, but that wasn’t stopping her.

“I’ll collect on that, you can be sure,” he called after her. As he freed Ka-Zar he murmured, “You are a lucky husband, sir.”

“I know,” Ka-Zar replied. Flipping loose the last shackle

around his ankle, he ran to join his mate. Hank dashed over to Archangel.

Barbaras suddenly appeared at the end of the row of slabs. Hank managed to release one of Warren’s wrists—hopefully he could do the rest himself—and met the four-armed mutate’s charge.

Barbaras, he knew from experience, was horrendously strong. Hank declined to meet him hand to hand. Instead, he chop-blocked him at the knees. The mutate tumbled forward, saved from striking his head on the stone only by putting out all his many palms at once. The slaps sounded like gunshots.

Hank sprang to his feet. Between one heartbeat and the next, he took in a snapshot of the situation just beyond his little battle. Bobby, his powers apparently not as depleted as the other prisoners, had assumed his ice form, turned his shackles brittle, and burst free. Ororo had managed to call up a tiny ice storm to freeze a patch of spilled water on the floor, bringing down Vertigo as she tried to wobble to her feet. With Ka-Zar joining the clash with the main fragment of guards, Logan was rushing off toward the depths of the cavern to deal with something Hank couldn’t see.

From the cannon bursts and pterosaurian screeches coming from above, Sam was still managing to keep Sauron occupied. Not a bad start to the rescue. Barbaras, though, was hurtling back at Hank obnoxiously quickly.

The Beast retreated, grabbing his attacker’s foremost wrist and rolling him into a somersault. The mutate slammed to the limestone again. “I borrowed that technique from the Japanese art of aikido,” the Beast explained. “A logical application of the principles of leverage which—”

Barbaras bounded upright, forcing Hank to abandon an attempt to free Ororo. McCoy ducked beneath one strike, two, then was sent reeling by the third and fourth blows.

He saw stars. Where were the garters?

The Beast scampered backwards. ‘ ‘No doubt you are dissatisfied with the lack of a proper wrestling mat,” he quipped through swollen lips, taunting his enemy to continue the assault rather than turn and bash Ororo or Psylocke while they were still confined to their slabs.

Barbaras closed the gap. “Yaahh!” he cried, and hammered the Beast with all four fists.

Hank deflected the blows, using his agility to compensate for the disadvantage in strength. It felt like he was knocking aside swipes of Colossus’s metal limbs. A trace of panic was taking root when a giant snowball whapped Barbaras in the face. The mutate staggered back, stunned and momentarily blinded. A precise puff of wind, courtesy of Storm, tapped him behind the knees, tipping him over. Then, before Hank could leap in, down came Archangel’s wing, rapping him sharply on the skull.

Hank looked up to see Warren releasing the last clamp around his ankle. The winged X-Man dropped to the floor just as Iceman trotted up. The three of them regarded Barbaras, who groaned, tried to lift his head, and passed out.

“Heave ho,” Hank said. His old-time teammates reached under Barbaras and hefted their opponent onto the slab that Archangel had just vacated. They rapidly closed the cuffs around him. The shackles designed for Warren’s wings took care of the extra arms.

A wave of nausea hit the group. Hank wheeled toward the spot where he had last seen Vertigo. His motion accentuated the dizziness, collapsing him to his knees.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he heard an impassioned female voice call. Through blurred vision he saw Shanna leap atop Vertigo. Suddenly the nausea vanished.

But Brainchild was emerging from beneath his console, straightening up behind Shanna with an axe handle in his

grip-

Iceman tossed a rock-hard snowball at Brainchild, catching him just above the ear. He fell.

“Nice pitch,” Hank told Bobby.

“No problem. That head’s a big target.”

Warren, shaking off the last of the aftereffects of Vertigo’s interference, flapped into the upper reaches of the cavern, joining the dogfight between Cannonball and Sauron. He did so none too steadily, Hank was sorry to see. His teammates’ powers seemed to be returning to full power quite slowly.

“I’ll help over there,” Hank said, indicating Shanna and Vertigo’s tussle. “You finish liberating our fine damsels.”

He reached Shanna just as she collapsed to the floor, obviously dizzy. But she took Vertigo with her. The female mutate struck the limestone hard. By the time Hank lifted away from Shanna, she was limp.

“Let’s shackle and blindfold her,” Hank suggested to Shanna, dropping his burden in a heap.

“Look out!” Shanna said.

The Beast instinctively bounded to the side. Brainchild’s axe handle whisked by where Hank’s head had been. Then Shanna was on the assailant. Her first blow struck him on the large welt left by the iceball. He yelped, clutched his head, and did a remarkably poor job of avoiding Shanna’s followup punches and kicks. He sagged to the floor, dazed and temporarily harmless.

“Now, I’ll shackle both of them," Shanna said.

The blaring trumpeting of mammoths echoed through the chamber again. Three of the creatures thundered out of the passageway down which they had disappeared.

“I’ll be an orangutan’s nephew,” the Beast murmured, eyes widening.

Atop the lead mammoth was Lupo. Apparently his power to control certain animals had allowed him to quell the fear Zabu had instilled in these members of the stampede. He had turned them around. The barrage of tusks and tree-trunk legs sent the battling guards and Ka-Zar and his sabretooth scrambling to get out of the way.

“Hey!” Hank yelled. “That was my trick!”

“Heads up!” Iceman cried. Bobby was suddenly beside Hank. He threw up an ice barrier that shielded the console area, protecting himself, Hank, Shanna, Brainchild, and Vertigo.

The lead mammoth stomped past. Lupo was slapping its ears, trying to get it to obey him completely. So far his efforts appeared futile. The creature rushed on toward the exit.

The other two members of its herd followed close behind. Hank saw for the first time that one of these carried Gaza. Atop the other danced Wolverine. As Gaza swung his club at Logan, Logan swung his claws at the giant. The altercation had not resolved itself before the woolly transports vanished down the tunnel.

“I have a feeling they’re going to be back,” Bobby said. “We'd better wrap this up. Can’t do anything with mammoths tramping through.”

“That, my dear Mr. Drake, was the reason we chased the herd in here in the first place,” Hank said wryly.

Ororo took charge of the defeated captives, dragging them back to the slabs for confinement. Psylocke joined Bobby and Hank as they charged into the disorganized array of guards. Thanks to Zabu and Ka-Zar—and earlier, to Wolverine, Shanna, and the mammoths—several of the enemy tribesmen already littered the cavern’s rough-hewn floor. Psylocke saw to them, plunging her diluted but effective psychic knife into their skulls, ensuring that they would remain unconscious long enough to pose no threat to the outcome of the battle.

Hank pursed his lips, foregoing his usual lighthearted banter. This was the grunt work phase. He tackled a warrior who had just made it back to his feet and held him until Psylocke could minister her touch of grace. Nearby, Bobby tripped others with ice staffs and weighted them down with piles of snow, again until Ms, Braddock could pay a visit.

Killing would be too good for most of them, Hank reflected, knowing how many innocent victims had fallen to these raiders. But some might not be murderers. This way, the bad could later be sorted from the only-slightly-bad. Justice need not be hasty to be well served.

Ka-Zar’s fist connected with a huge, gap-toothed warrior, who collapsed, leaving the immediate area clean of enemies. The Lord of the Savage Land sighed, turned to Hank, and shook his head. “If I hadn’t been drained of strength and tied up for eighteen hours, I would have taken care of him much faster.”

Zabu cornered one last resistor, a middle-aged, scowling woman with breath so disagreeable Hank could smell it from ten feet away. The cat, as ever not one to apply unnecessary violence, backed her against the cavern wall without slashing. She trembled so hard Hank thought her elbows would fall off. Then she looked up and saw Psylocke approaching, and trembled more.

“What goes around, comes around, Pibah,” Betsy said, and thrust her intangible weapon between the tribeswoman’s eyes. The crone gave up one small whimper and folded into a lump.

Hank nodded. He scanned around. In the lower reaches of the cavern, calm prevailed at last. Ororo had finished shackling the defeated mutates. The greatest source of danger remaining in their midst was a pile of mammoth dung a few steps away, a deposit whose slippery nature had already caused the premature defeat of one of the raiders.

Above, it was a different story. Sauron wheeled about, vigorous and agile despite constant rebounding assaults on the part of Cannonball. Sam was blasting at full speed, ric-ochetting off stalactites and walls faster than a pinball. The distracted look in Sauron’s eyes showed the villain was growing more and more dazed, but so far he had avoided a direct hit.

Warren soared in and out of the tangle, waiting for his moment. His lack of strength prevented him from closing in. Sauron’s constant changes of direction and Sam’s frequent interference prevented Archangel from casting his wing knives.

Beside Hank, Iceman grimaced. “He’s moving too fast. Don’t know where to put my ice.”

‘ ‘Raise some walls and divide the cavern into smaller sections,” Hank suggested. “Eventually Sauron won’t have any maneuvering room.”

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Don’t know how fast I can do that, though. I’m still awfully depleted.”

‘ ‘Just—’ ’

The cavern began rumbling again.

“Here come the mammoths!” Hank cried. “Clear a path!”

The group rushed to yank inert bodies out of the center of the chamber. Iceman strained to erect guard rails, providing the stampede with a track. Hank hoped the animals would follow it.

The three behemoths roared from the tunnel as red-eyed as ever. They were moving slightly slower. Tiring at last. Lupo was firmly ensconced on the lead bull, but his yips and

howls and gestures made it clear he still had no real control.

The battle atop the other two animals continued to rage. Claw marks scored Gaza’s arms. Wolverine’s scalp was matted with blood. Just as the combatants whisked past the huddled clump of X-Men, Logan buried his claws like skewers in Gaza’s club and yanked.

Gaza let go too slowly. Unbalanced, he tumbled off the rear end of the mammoth. Wolverine stayed with his beast. He was still working the club off his claws when he disappeared once more down the passageway, a tusk-length behind Lupo.

Gaza sat up. He did not look pleased.

“How generous of our confederate to share his bounty with us,” Hank declared. He charged in. His kick knocked the mutate over before he could fully straighten up.

“Whuff!” the Beast grunted. Gaza’s own kick, from the ground, sent Hank ten feet into the air. The villain had tremendously good aim for someone who had been blind from birth.

Gaza rose to his feet and tried to stomp Hank, but only made it one step. Iceman put a patch of ice in his way, and Ororo buffeted him with a gust. He toppled over. He got only to his hands and knees before Zabu landed squarely on him. The cat remained aboard until Psylocke thrust her ethereal blade into the giant’s skull.

Hank rose, rubbing the huge bruise Gaza had raised on his thigh, but grinning. “I like these odds.”

They had only an instant to savor the victory. “Oh, no!” Ororo cried.

Hank glanced upward. Cannonball was zooming across the jagged ceiling without his kinetic envelope around him, carried by the momentum of his last ricochet. Sauron screeched in glee.

“He nailed Sam with hypnotism!” Bobby cried out. “Made him drop his blast field!”

Before the Iceman’s comments were out of his mouth, Cannonball collided with a stalactite head first. He folded up and fell.

To Hank, the next two seconds happened in telescoped time, so full of incidents that it seemed a much greater span passed. As Cannonball fell, Ororo sent up a wind to catch him. Weakened as she was, all she managed was to cut the speed of his descent. Iceman simultaneously raised his hands to do something, grunted, and began creating a mound of snow on the cavern floor instead.

The Beast jumped directly beneath Sam’s plummeting form. He caught him with both arms, scooping him up as expertly as a major-league outfielder catching a fly ball. The impact knocked both of them into the packed powder.

“Didn’t have enough juice left to make an ice slide,” Iceman reported, and sagged to his knees.

“You did enough,” Hank said. He gestured at Sam, who though unconscious, was breathing evenly. “I told this young man he needed to wear a helmet.”

Sauron’s peacock-shrill shrieks pulled the Beast’s attention upward. The monster swooped in on Archangel, taking advantage of Warren’s spent resources. His long hind feet battered the X-Man in the head. Warren fluttered downward, blinking and clutching at a cut on his temple. He managed a fitful toss of wing blades.

One of the knives sank into Sauron’s thigh. The villain screamed and began to spasm, caught in the throes of the projectile’s short-circuiting effect. For an instant, Hank thought he would fall along with Warren. Clearly, the fight had drained a great deal of the energy he had stolen from his captives. But he stabilized, pulled out the knife, and cast it aside.

“You haven’t won yet!” Sauron cried. The statement was so vehement Hank thought their enemy would race straight toward them. But he soared over to a high ledge and reached into a small niche.

“There’s a door up there,” Psylocke said.

There was. A section of the stone wall moved away. “I’ll be back at a time of my choosing,” Sauron taunted, and slipped into a corridor, shutting the portal.

Ororo tried to rise on her winds, but halfway up she groaned and was forced to retreat to the floor. By then, Archangel was able to stand. He launched upward, made it to the ledge, and yanked at the door.

' •- “He’s barred it somehow. It would take more firepower than we’ve got right now to bash through.”

Hank dribbled a little snow in Cannonball’s face, hoping it would nudge him awake, but the kid didn’t stir. Hank regretted that Cyclops or Rogue had not come along on the mission.

“We’ll get it open,” Bobby said confidently.

“Not soon enough, I fear,” said Hank.

The chamber was astonishingly quiet compared to a few moments earlier. Just low moans from Brainchild, an echo of mammoths stomping around somewhere deep inside the mountain, and a faint squawking filtering down a narrow passageway near the well, where he’d seen some of the raiders flee.

“I know that sound,” Ka-Zar blurted. “We can still stop Sauron!” He whirled toward Betsy. “How much of your power is back?”

She winced. “Some. I was getting through to him just now. I think that’s a big reason he ran away.”

“Enough to do some damage if you get close?”

“Get me within ten meters of him and he’s history,” Betsy said fervently

“Come with me!” The Lord of the Savage Land grasped Psylocke by the wrist and sprinted for the small passageway. “Come on, Zabu!”

Shanna sighed. “That man. Never stops to explain. Always trying to do things himself.” She took off in his wake, waving Storm and Archangel after her. “We can use anyone who can fly.”

The sabretooth took the lead and plunged into the opening. The five heroes followed at their best speed.

Hank and Bobby looked at each other. At their feet, Sam groaned and began rubbing his head like a toddler trying to remember how to wake up from a nap.

“I suppose we’re elected to keep things under control here,” Hank groused. He gazed at Gaza’s prone form. “We’d better drag him to a slab before he gives us any more bruises.”

“Hope whatever Ka-Zar’s got in mind works,” Bobby muttered, grabbing one of Gaza’s wrists. He slicked up the floor with ice and began dragging the mutate along the slippery surface.

“Nah,” Hank joked. “He just wanted an excuse to run off with Betsy.”

Iceman let go of Gaza to rest. “You know, I’m pooped. While the others take care of Sauron, I sure hope Lupo and Amphibius don’t give us grief.”

“They won’t.” The speaker was Wolverine, who appeared from the shadows of the cave, sans mammoths, dragging two inert bodies behind him. The captive on his left side had green, slimy skin; the one on the right had dark fur and pointed ears. Hank was surprised to see them both still breathing. He concluded they must have surrendered before Logan got in a really bad mood.

“To the slabs with them all,” Hank chirped. He regarded Brainchild’s smashed console. Not permanently damaged, from what he could determine at a glance. He picked up a pair of discarded inhibitor collars from the floor. “Let’s see if I can get this equipment working again. This crew is overdue for a dose of their own prescription.”

As they plunged down the long, twisting passageway, Psylocke considered reading Ka-Zar’s mind to learn what his plan was, but she needed to save up her psychic strength in order to defeat Sauron. She trusted that soon enough, she would know anyway.

And she did. They rounded one last curve and found themselves in the midst of a pterosaur aerie. The chamber was huge, larger even than the one that had housed the prisoners. Pteranodons and a handful of pterodactyls hopped and fluttered about on log perches, disturbing great piles of their own droppings. They were blindfolded—probably the only way they could be controlled in such a confined space.

On the far side air flowed in through a gap just wide enough for the largest of the creatures to fly through. The opening was angled downward—it would not have been visible when the X-Men had conducted their aerial surveillance over the previous two days.

Ororo and Warren ran immediately to the slot and jumped. Psylocke’s heart stopped beating until she saw Ororo loft upward, feebly but sufficiently supported by her winds.

The only human there in the roost to greet them was a wiry, gray-haired old savage, a long-time pterosaur trainer judging by the talon scars on his arms and legs. He backed up against the wall and put up empty hands when Zabu trotted up to him.

Betsy quickly scanned his mind. Not an active raider, just a devoted keeper of the flying reptiles who had refused to leave his station when his compatriots had fled. “It’s all right, Zabu,” she called. “He’s not a problem.”

Zabu flicked his ear at her and coughed a feline acknowledgment. Suddenly she was brushed by a sentient whisper she recalled sensing during her imprisonment. She smiled. Just as she had suspected, it was Zabu’s mind she had touched back then. So that’s how Hank and Sam had found the cavern. What a cat.

“Four or five raiders got away through here during the battle,” she related to Ka-Zar. “And Sauron came through just moments ago.” She pointed to a narrow opening halfway up one wall, the end point of the escape route the mutate leader had taken.

He nodded. “What’s important is that they left some of the squadron behind.” He reached up and pulled the blindfold from the sturdy pteranodon he had been soothing. He led it toward the exit. “Ready to fly?”

Betsy glanced at Shanna, who was struggling to calm down another of the flying reptiles.

“She’ll come along when she gets that turkey under control. We can’t wait for her,” Ka-Zar said.

Betsy braced herself, hopped to the front of the saddle, and made room for Ka-Zar. With a sickening lurch, the creature leapt and spread its wings.

A gorge opened up beneath them. They soared so low she could make out individual dragonflies amid the cattails and reeds of the stream below. And those were standard dragonflies, not the monstrosities that lived in the jungle.

“Is this thing strong enough to carry two of us?” she yelled.

“I think so,” Ka-Zar shouted into the wind. “We’ll find out.”

The pteranodon flapped its wings, gained altitude, and found a thermal updraft. Immediately it vaulted toward the roof of clouds high above. The Savage Land appeared in all its glory. Psylocke spotted Storm not far ahead, still within-the pleistocene zone. Ororo was wobbling and was keeping low, where she wouldn’t have as far to fall if her powers gave out.

Archangel was farther ahead, but not by much. He had barely reached the fringes of the jungle. He was pumping his wings as hard as he could manage, clearly a man with a goal. Betsy looked ahead and saw why. A green, batlike speck out over the swamp could only be Sauron.

Ka-Zar saw it, too, and spurred their mount. The wind blasted the sweat of battle right off Betsy’s exposed skin. The pteranodon screeched, obviously angry to be pushed so hard. Luckily, that anger fueled it to even greater momentum. They raced right past Ororo and Warren.

Surely they couldn’t catch Sauron. He had a good lead, and no one to carry. But he was merely gliding now, turning in a weary arc out over the great central lake, scattering a flock of cranes.

Ka-Zar changed direction, closing the gap as Sauron continued to follow a curve rather than get as far away as fast as he could.

A chill ran down Psylocke’s spine. “He’s baiting us. He wants to fight.” She was as certain as if she had read Sauron’s thoughts.

“If that’s so, he’s doing us a favor,” Ka-Zar declared.

Great minds think alike, Betsy thought. Ka-Zar’s breath was strong against the nape of her neck. She could read his passion and commitment. Victory or death. The clarity of the emotion was like a drug, coursing from his veins to hers and back again.

As they reached the shore of the lake, placing them past the last convenient source of cover, Sauron turned directly at them and began flapping hard. Ka-Zar eased off on the reins of the pteranodon. Psylocke knew he was saving energy and calculating the best evasive maneuver, but she ceased paying attention. She was gathering all her psychic resources into a pinpoint—as focused a measure as calling up her knife.

Her reservoir of power opened, supplying her with only a fraction of her usual allotment. She gritted her teeth. What you have, you use. No seme worrying about what isn 't available.

Suddenly Ka-Zar groaned. Betsy hissed in pain. A strident hypnotic command pierced them from one side of their brains to the other: Stay there. Don’t move.

For the span of two heartbeats, Ka-Zar’s hands were immobile on the reins. Their mount soared on in a straight line. Sauron bore down. The villain may have been too rattled back in the cavern to cope with Cannonball’s fusillade, but he was in the clear now, able to concentrate.

But Sauron, for all his psychic talent, was not a full telepath. She was. She quashed the mesmerizing voice, first in her mind, then in Ka-Zar’s.

“Duck!” she blurted.

Ka-Zar jabbed his knees into the pteranodon’s sides. The creature tucked its wings. They slid under Sauron’s outstretched talons so narrowly Betsy lost several strands of hair.

Sauron screeched and circled back toward them. “So precipitously you pursue me! I am not spent yet! And you are oh, so sluggish aboard that poor, overburdened beast!”

Psylocke put more juice into the mental force field she had erected around herself and Ka-Zar. Sauron had found a way to accentuate his attack—by using spoken words rather than silently projecting his wishes.

“He’s trying to intimidate us into giving up,” she told Ka-Zar.

“I know. I can feel it. Here’s what I say to that!” As Sauron streaked in, the jungle man hefted the weighted net that had been attached to the saddle and flung it.

The net struck Sauron on the upper beak, forcing him to shut his eyes. Ka-Zar banked the pteranodon and Betsy used a martial arts block to deflect one of Sauron’s sharp rear feet. • The other foot and its talons gashed the pteranodon’s neck.

Their mount screamed. As it rebounded clear of Sauron it began flapping wildly and bucking. Ka-Zar clung tightly to its neck. Betsy clung tightly to Ka-Zar. The landscape wobbled crazily below them.

They were easy targets now. Betsy tried to locate Sauron, but amid the flapping wings and lurching changes of direction, she saw only clouds, horizon, and a great big fall if she lost her grip.

“Veer left!” called a familiar voice.

Ka-Zar yanked fiercely on the reins. The pteranodon veered left. A shadow passed over them.

Finally, their poor, wounded carrier responded to Ka-Zar’s soothing murmurs and his firm hold. As they soared more steadily, Betsy glanced back and saw Shanna spiraling in toward Sauron. The villain had turned and was responding to her attack, momentarily ignoring the initial dogfight.

“My psychic shields can’t reach her!” Psylocke said urgently. “She’s vulnerable to his hypnotism!”

Even as she spoke, Shanna ceased spurring her flyer. The pteranodon began to coast. The She-Devil came to her senses immediately, but Sauron was closing fast. She ducked, avoiding his talons. Her mount was not so lucky. The monster’s claws tore great slices in its leathery wings. It screamed and slid into a nose dive.

“Shanna!” Ka-Zar shouted.

Psylocke swallowed hard. Shanna was unhurt, but she faced a lethal impact on the water below. But the pterosaur feebly extended its tattered wings, gliding/plunging toward the shore. It would make it, if Sauron didn’t follow through.

They would just have to make sure of that. “Get me close to him,” she told Ka-Zar.

Her ally was already doing so, pulling their flyer into a tight circle with the villain, preventing him from streaking directly at them. To close the gap and slash at them again would require Sauron to stay near for several seconds in a row.

That was the opportunity Betsy had been waiting for.

“No!” Sauron rasped, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Psylocke poured everything she had into the probe. Avoiding the deeply rooted defenses of his natural psyche, she seized the construct Brainchild had crafted and yanked on the places already weakened earlier in the cavern.

Suddenly she recoiled. One of Sauron’s organic personalities leapt into coherency. She recognized it just as she was pushed from his mind.

“Lykos!” she screamed. ‘‘Karl Lykos! Help us!”

Sauron fluttered, losing altitude rapidly, jibbering and spasming. “I... I... where ... ?”

“You are in the Savage Land, Karl!” Ka-Zar yelled. “Tanya is dead by the hand of your alter-ego! Do what you have to do!”

Sauron’s eyes bulged. He coughed as if his heart were trying to crawl up his gullet. Abruptly he steadied, hanging in the air.

“I will,” he said clearly. His voice was raspy, tortured ... and human.

He kept the pteranodon shape, but he was no longer Sauron. Moving only to fold up his wings, he plummeted down like a meteorite. The impact of his body on the lake’s surface sounded like a thunderclap.

Ka-Zar and Betsy stared silently below. Adrenaline still rushed through their blood vessels, but with no more need for action, their limbs merely shuddered and their mouths quivered, trying to form words.

Below, the splash subsided. A moment later the waters began to chum. Fins, tails, and long, toothed mouths broke the surface. A tremendous host of the lake’s predatory fish and prehistoric marine reptiles were gathering. By the time they were done, they would probably have forgotten what prey they had come for, and many of them would be tom to pieces, claimed by a killing frenzy.

Blood welled up, turning the foam from white to pink. Sauron did not surface.

“Rest in peace, Karl,” Ka-Zar said.

Betsy sighed. All at once, she realized a new winged shape had appeared, flying low over the water above the carnage. It was Warren. He circled three times, then climbed to join them.

“It seems to be over,” he called solemnly. “I saw the bit at the end. Sorry I couldn’t make it in time to help.” He sounded incredibly weary. It was amazing he was still able to fly, and possibly a blessing that he had not had to fight.

He wasn’t the only one weary, thought Psylocke, finally able to acknowledge the dead, wooden stiffness in her bones.

She knew without scanning that Ka-Zar was only slightly better off, and only that much because he hadn’t had to expend himself using mutant talents.

“Not quite over,” Ka-Zar called back. “I need to alert the villagers. We’ll want them up at that cavern as soon as possible to deal with our captives and help out in case the mutates have any reinforcements to call upon.”

“I can do that,” Warren offered.

“I was hoping you could look after Shanna and Ororo.”

Glancing back, Betsy saw Storm fluttering down to a shaky landing on the shore beside Shanna and her crippled pteranodon.

Ka-Zar patted his mount’s neck, avoiding the gashes. “This animal needs its wounds closed up before it loses too much blood. We’ll do that in the village, too. We’ll see you when you bring the women in.”

“Okay,” Archangel said. “We'll be there as soon as we catch our breaths.” The X-Man veered off, beginning a long, easy glide toward the shore near the swamp, where Shanna and Ororo were waving.

Betsy called upon the meager remnants of her psychic reserve to telepathically inform her friends of the plan, and then she slumped against Ka-Zar, grateful to have him to lean on as they coasted across the lake toward the territory of the Fall People.

They cruised over the stockade walls amid shouts of excitement from the youths manning the watchtower. The pteranodon flopped to a perch on one of the log benches of the storytelling circle and hung its head, heedless of the antic humans around it. Red rivulets trickled down from its neck. Not, Betsy was gratified to see, as profusely as the leakage had flowed during the battle.

Ka-Zar jumped out of the saddle and helped Betsy down.

Letting go of her, he turned and hailed the approaching warriors. “Victory!” he cried.

Betsy smiled.

The jungle lord explained the situation at the cavern, its location, and details of the battle. Betsy only half-listened, because she needed telepathy to translate the native language and that required too much effort just yet. Soon Tongah and a large knot of strong adult men and women jogged to the gates, leaving other tribespeople to gather needed material and spread the word.

Betsy saw the grim frowns and glinting stares of the warriors and knew that when they reached the enemy stronghold, they would be swift to begin the process of justice. Any raider lucky enough to escape execution would no doubt regret that he had been spared.

A healer began covering the pteranodon’s wound with salve and poultices, while his assistants kept the beast calm. Betsy slipped off to the shade of the lodge. Ka-Zar soon joined her there.

“That was a fine coup de grace you delivered,” he said.

She shook her head. “My part was trivial. Sauron and his various alter egos did the real sabotage.”

“No. Let’s take credit for this one,” her companion said. “We deserve it.”

She chuckled. “Very well, sir. I thank you for the compliment, and hasten to add that I couldn’t have done it without you. If you hadn’t realized where to find that pterosaur aerie, the fiend would have gotten away.”

She leaned forward, kissed him, then settled back on her heels, smiling.

Betsy noticed for the first time that Zira was standing a mere fifteen feet away, with little Matthew in her arms.

Betsy’s cheeks grew so hot she could toast marshmallows. Ka-Zar glanced at the swept mud beyond the lodge poles. But Zira merely shrugged and winked.

“Doan whurry,” she said, tousling Matthew’s hair. “The little whun is too yhung to ...”—she struggled hard to recall the English phrase, brightening as she did so—“tattle tale.” “Thank God,” Ka-Zar muttered softly. “Otherwise we’d all see exactly why my wife is called the She-Devil.”

CHAPTER 15

The feast began well before dark and continued into the night. A bonfire crackled in the center of the village of the Fall People. Children and young men and women pranced around the flames, seemingly immune to the jungle heat, laughing and chanting and exuding the aromas of incense and healthy sweat

A day and a half after the fight, Cannonball was ready to befieve they had won. No sign of Sauron had turned up in the lake. The mutates were imprisoned. The cavern had been explored and secured. The raiders, save for a few who had escaped early, were dead or confined to a peripheral grotto for imminent serving of justice.

The village had worked all day to prepare the celebration. Roasted pigs emerged from luau-type trenches. Blankets lay piled high with fruit. Tubs sloshed with beverages, many of them casting off wonderful, yeasty fumes of fermentation. Dancers exhibited the designs they had painted on their bodies. Singers and musicians, especially drummers, provided an exuberant background rhythm.

The X-Men added their touches. At dusk, Cannonball had raced in circles over the huts, glowing like a Fourth-of-July rocket. Not quite the display Jubilee could have put on, but he was proud of it. Now Ororo was air-conditioning the audience with zephyrs of autumnal wind and with spritzes of cool drizzle. Over between the huts, Iceman was renewing a three-foot layer of snow, and laughing as the village children showed their instant expertise at the previously unknown art of snowball fighting.

Allies from neighboring tribes shared in the festivities, but the stockade was only slightly more crowded than normal. Many of the resident warriors were still guarding the cavern, and others were en route to or from. Sam could cover the distance in a fraction of an hour at full-speed blasting, but on foot the journey took a full day even at the marathon pace some of these magnificent athletes could achieve. The Savage Land was vast. Sam, Warren, and Ororo had transported some by air, but couldn’t do that for everyone, especially while trying to overcome the deleterious effects of the battle. Sam thought it was too bad the tribes didn’t have pterosaurs to use as taxis. The people seemed reluctant to be near the reptiles, even though the mount who had served Ka-Zar and Psylocke so well was treated with respect and indulgence. Sam suspected the raiders had violated some sort of intertribal policy by making use of the creatures in their schemes.

The taste of roast pork and sweet potato clung to Sam’s mouth, encouraging him to run his tongue over his lips. Good food, good scene. What more could a Cumberland boy want? Maybe two lovely native damsels, clad in not-much, to rub his bare feet? That was exactly what he had. And a fine job they were doing, too, dabbing his soles with coconut oil and working out kinks he hadn’t been aware he had had. Must have come from all that walking in the foothills. With all the flying around he usually did, that ground search had taxed his lower extremities. He leaned back in his half-hammock and let his eyes fall partially closed, listening to the young ladies serenade him with their giggling conversation, all of it unintelligible to him, but intriguingly exuberant.

Iceman finished winterizing the playground and strolled back toward his buddy. He plopped down in the neighboring half-hammock..

“How’s the headache?” Bobby asked.

Sam lifted the poultice off the bruise on his scalp. “Between the healer’s herbs and all those ice packs you helped put t’gether, the swelling’s pretty near gone. Considerin’ the way I came out of m’last tussle with Sauron, I’m feeiin’ like a linebacker that’s just won the Super Bowl. End of a hard season, but I survived and got m’winner’s ring.”

“Well, you sure don’t look like you’re suffering.” Bobby grinned, dismissed his ice form, and clasped his hands behind his head. One of the lovely masseuses accommodatingly shifted over to him. He moaned delightedly as she kneaded the callouses on his heel.

“Now I know why you old guys kept the New Mutants under curfew so much,” Sam said. “You didn’t want us to know what a mint-julep kind o’ life you led when we weren’t lookin’.”

Bobby stared up at the halo of fireflies dancing above the grass roofs of the huts, kept at bay by the smoke of the bonfire. They looked like agitated stars in the oh-so-dark overcast sky.

“The Savage Land has its moments,” Bobby declared. “Maybe we should stick around a few more days.”

Now that Iceman was in human form, Sam couldn’t help but notice all the black-and-blue marks dotting his companion’s body, temporary legacies of the pounding he had taken in the swamp. They didn’t seem to be annoying Bobby any more than Sam’s head and neck insults were distracting him. Not that either of them liked the damage, but right now those aches and pains, in their strange, profound way, made the pleasure and sense of accomplishment that much sweeter.

For the youngest recruit of the team, he had done okay. All the frustration of the first part of the mission, when he never seemed to be in a useful place at the right time, had evaporated. He had made the show after all, keeping the team’s hope alive. Sacked the enemy quarterback.

One of these days, he was going to quit worrying about measuring up. A night like this put him most of the way there. He knew he belonged.

He gazed contentedly at his peers—yes, his peers, not his “seniors”—arrayed throughout the village. Psylocke and Archangel were leaning against the shaman’s hut, so lost in rapt conversation that they weren’t even watching the Swamp People’s fire-eater demonstrating his art a few steps away.

Ka-Zar and Shanna sat cross-legged among the crowd encircling the dancers, elbows intertwined, frequently leaning sideways to nuzzle each other. Little Matthew scrambled from lap to lap.

Sam’s eyes widened as he observed a long gaze exchanged between Betsy and Shanna. They smiled like his sisters did when they bonded after a particularly heated argument. Not that Sam’s sisters ever bonded very often where witnesses could see.

When they did, it usually meant trouble for everyone else in the family.

But not here. Not now. Tonight was magic.

Ororo was engaged in elegant, subtle weatherworking, the sort of indulgence she could never partake of during the heat of battle, and which had been utterly impossible while she repaired the damage to the Savage Land climate. From her chair inside the village grounds, she gently beckoned stray air currents from the lake, enriched them with moisture, and funneled them miles upriver to the celebration. With a casual gesture, she eased the heat on the brows of the infants in their mother’s arms. She misted the hair of the dancers until they flung droplets with each shake of their heads. She banished any pockets of dead air that tried to collect between the huts.

It was so very good to be able to use her power again without feeling as though she were going to faint from the effort.

Hank McCoy emerged from a guest hut, his fur freshly groomed, his eyes far brighter and more alert than when Archangel had ferried him back to base after a long day spent tinkering with Brainchild’s devices in the cavern.

“Your work went well today?” she asked.

“The inhibitor equipment seems to be functioning to specifications,” he reported. “That Brainchild came up with some remarkable innovations for someone determined to create items of no honorable worth to society. Rather delicious to turn such mechanisms on their designer. I think we can leave the Savage Land confident that the X-Men’s presence won’t be required to keep him and his fellow mutates under wraps. They won’t be bothering anyone while they remain down there, unless it’s to annoy the resident bats with their whining.”

And how long would that circumstance last? pondered Ororo. The tribal victims of the raiders had agreed that the best punishment, in the near term, would be to force Brainchild, Lupo, Gaza, and the others to endure a stout dose of the suffering and humiliation they had so readily given to others. Yet would the patience of the jailers last more than a day or two? The locals were not the “savages” the outside world assumed, but they lived by a code that did not become entangled in appeal processes, highly paid defense attorneys, and bureaucratic red tape.

“It’s good that you could join us,” Ororo said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to order you to come out and have fun.”

Hank raised a bushy blue eyebrow. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you put down your magic weather wand and partake of your own council, O goddess of the rain?”

She laughed. “Oh, Henry, I am having fun. I’m not exactly deskbound at a police station, filling out arrest reports, now am I?”

“True. And I might add that if you reported to work at a police station dressed like that, your boss might well arrest you.” He turned and waved to Bobby and Sam. “We all refresh ourselves in our own way. I suppose to a deity and a leader of the team, what you’re doing constitutes surcease from your labors, but to me you still appear preoccupied with the general population’s comfort and welfare.”

She blinked. Come to think of it, she had been tending to responsibilities a great deal that day, making sure matters were properly dealt with. It was her way of balancing the frustration of the weather disruption and her own capture

“You did well,” the Beast said. “Given the challenges Sauron and his brood had thrust in your way, only a perfectionist would quibble with any part of your performance these past few days. And you know of whom I speak. As Rogue would say, ‘Lighten up, sugar. All’s well that ends well.’ ”

A perfectionist? Ororo preferred the term “responsible” or “dedicated.” But Hank had a point. This was a proper juncture to stop worrying about leadership or justice or consequences, and give herself a moment to just “be.”

“Well, my friend,” she said to Hank, tucking her arm in his elbow and strolling toward the heaped food for a second helping. “What would you recommend a lady such as I do to relax?”

“Why, when I am in need of serious recuperation, a rousing game of chess is just the thing. Ka-Zar has a very fine set of pieces, did you know? Had them made in England from some mastodon ivory that he donated.”

Ororo chuckled. “Ka-Zar has a surprising number of modem-world possessions, tucked here and there. Shanna had some testy words to say about it at lunch.”

‘ ‘Oh, yes. The ladies’ gab session down by the hot springs. How did that go?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re one of the boys.” Ororo waved her, hand above her head, gave the cooling breezes a burst that would keep them going a while without further attention, and pulled the Beast toward the lodge. “All right. A game of chess. But you know you’ll win.”

“That, my dear,” said Hank, “is what is so relaxing about it.”

Wolverine finished his third circuit outside the stockade walls. No suspicious noises intraded from the darkness, just jungle chatter or the buzz of nocturnal insects pollinating the garden. No drank and disorderly tribesmen lurked in the shadows of the walls, needing a reminder to be cool. Most of all, Sauron did not come stumbling up to the gate, wings in tatters, soaking wet, and really mad at what he had been put through by the attendant squad of X-Men.

Logan extended a claw and scratched one of his long sideburns. The wolf-bite mark there still itched, though the wound itself, like those everywhere else on his body, had closed and knit back together, courtesy of his healing factor.

Sometimes sensations lingered—itches, tingles, heat—as scar tissue was absorbed and turned back into standard, good-as-new flesh.

He had to watch himself whenever he started to feel good. It made him want to scrap and tussle all over again. Wasn’t that what all that vitality was for? That’s what he would say, if asked.

But no one was asking. He didn’t have to play the tough guy with himself. That would be too much like having a conversation inside his head, and he had already gone through enough phases like that.

Face it, bub, he thought, you might have to take a break and enjoy yourself.

He reached a comer of the cultivated rows near the main enhance, and recognized the plants as tobacco. He was admiring their lushness when a village woman walked up. She seemed to take his interest in the leaf personally.

“You grow this?” he asked.

She nodded proudly. She held up her hand. In it was a cigar.

“Bless you, darlin’,” Logan said, and received the gift with reverence. The woman giggled and vanished back inside the stockade.

He examined his prize lovingly before pulling a match from his belt and lighting up. The natives of the Savage Land didn’t put their cigars in plastic wrappers and tuck them into boxes with brand names. They grew their tobacco on tiny, individually-tended plots of land like the one next to him. They carefully nurtured the plants, dried the leaves in the open air, and rolled the final product by hand. No chemical fertilizers. No pesticides. Logan’s healing factor barely needed to kick in as he drew in a soft, warm cloud and exhaled in a sinuous plume.

He hadn’t smoked for a month before coming on the mission. Probably he would give it up again when he returned to the mansion—or at least, make a token attempt at it. But that was then and this was now. He filled his lungs again, closed his eyes, and smiled.

When he opened them, a pair of well-built warriors emerged from the forest, following the torch-lit path to the stockade. Logan recognized them less by their silhouettes than by their supple strides and no-nonsense pace. And, of course, by their scent. Smoking a cigar didn’t deaden his mutant senses.

“Gelm. Aben.” He spread his arms to greet the two Lake People warriors. How they must have run to have finished the journey from their territory in time for the feast.

The pair whooped and rubbed wrists with the X-Man, looking as pleased to put in their appearance as when they had helped him snare Lupo. Gelm met his glance, took off his velociraptor necklace, and held it out.

‘ ‘Moshru,' ’ he said.

Logan raised an eyebrow. “So. You heard about me, eh? Sure. Be glad to.” He took the necklace and placed it around his neck.

He figured an hour would be about right, then he could give it back. By then, Gelm’s prized possession would be imbued with moshru, the essence of the god who had touched it. Logan found it somewhat embarrassing that the local people still thought enough of his previous visits to the Savage Land to regard him with such awe, but what the heck, anything for a friend. Besides, a bit of worship now and then sure beat the kind of treatment mutants received from the average citizen of the so-called civilized world.

The arrivals lifted their noses, inhaled, and smiled at the delicious aromas coming from the heart of the village.

“Whatcha waitin’ for?” Logan waved them in. “There’s plenty of grub and brew left.”

The trio were drawn to the light of the bonfire and the cacophony of happy, singing voices. As they gravitated toward the banquet, they paused to admire the dancers, particularly the women, their hair twirling, their bodies glistening with perspiration and fragrant oils, their teeth blazing white inside smiles.

“Now this is my idea of a party,” Logan declared, slapping his pals on the back.

Psylocke noticed Logan hanging with his native friends. She turned and saw that Sam and Bobby were still happily allowing their feet to be turned to putty. She telepathically sensed Hank and Ororo in the lodge deeply immersed in chess strategy. Their contentment overflowed into her. The Xavier Institute and the team’s day-to-day responsibilities hovered in some distant comer, like a neglected cobweb on the verge of turning to dust. Leaving the Savage Land would not be easy for any of them.

Across the feasting grounds, Ka-Zar gazed at her, and she gazed back. She could have probed to see what he was thinking, but she already knew. It was the same thing she was thinking. They had gone from the intrigue of what-might-be to the wistfulness of what-might-have-been.

This was one of those times she knew she loved Warren all the more, because she stayed with him knowing she could, if she wanted, find herself in the arms of men as attractive as Lord Kevin Plunder. Choice made bonds strong. Ka-Zar knew that, too. The fact that he had chosen to be so firmly devoted to Shanna was, ironically, one of the traits that made him so desirable.

She leaned back into Warren, pressing him more firmly against the shaman’s hut, letting her feel as though she were melting into him. She tilted her head. Their glances met. No wistful might-have-beens here. Just love, fulfilled.

“You look like you slept well,” she said, stroking his cheek. “No more nightmares?”

A vestigial dose of tension fled his shoulders. “No. No more nightmares.”

“Sauron did you a favor, in the end,” she said. “Had you not faced him, you might have always wondered if you had what it took to shut him out.”

He nodded. “I would rather have found out in a less dramatic way.”

“True. But we’re X-Men. We don’t do anything like others do. Regular people pay analysts two hundred fifty an hour to sit ,on leather couches in offices. We journey to exotic locales and beat up on super-powered villains for catharsis.” He chuckled. Suddenly he squeezed her, his hug so fervent that she almost wished she hadn’t eaten so much of the feast. “Thank you for being here.”

“And where else would I be, sir?”

“I wasn’t very attentive to you this week. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d felt a little abandoned.”

“You think I stay with you just for the companionship?” She laughed. “That you’re just a figurehead to keep me from being lonely?”

“Of course not,” he said quickly. “Sometimes I feel too lucky to deserve you, is all. It seems a miracle to find you beside me, time after time.”

“Have I ever given you cause to doubt me?” she asked. His face rose into a smile. The expression looked so good on his blue-skinned, golden-maned features, she thought. She began plotting to find ways to keep him that way as often as possible.

“No,” he said. “Not in any of the ways that matter.” She caressed his long, supple forearm. “What you said about not deserving me? Was that why you seemed so willing to sacrifice yourself back in the cavern? Were you so eager to die and leave me all alone?’ ’

“No,” he said. “Rather the opposite. I realized that thanks to you, I’d had enough beauty and grace in my life to die content, if that’s what was needed.” He placed his hand atop hers and held it gently. “I have to admit, I’m delighted it didn’t come to that.”

“As am I, love.”

“It was more than coming to closure regarding Sauron,” he said. “1 was willing to face the unknown because I had already done it with you, when we forged the psionic link. Tell me, what do you think of the idea of building a new one?”

She shivered, unsure whether the reaction was fear or delight. Probably both. “There’s no technical difficulty. With Professor X’s help we could even make it permanent, like what Jean and Scott have. I’ve been considering it for quite some time now.”

“But?” His voice grew tight with worry.

“I remember that moment in the cavern when I was sure you would be killed. The link was still active at that point. I knew if you died, I would feel it down to the core. Bad as it would be to have lost you at any other time, to lose you while we share the rapport would be the sort of anguish I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

“Then,” he whispered, “you don’t want the rapport?” “Yes. I do,” she said. She kissed him. “I have no question about that. But I’m scared, Warren. Tell me, can you be sure you want to take that step? To be able to feel me die from a world away, if I should be the one to go first?”

He glanced at the dancers. “I...” He sighed. “I’m not sure.”

“Nor am I. Yet.” She smiled gently. “We have time. If we feel it’s right, we can always do it later. We could even craft temporary links in the meantime, like the one we used here, before Sauron ripped it away.”

“In that case, we’ll be talking about it again.” He stood. “Elisabeth Braddock, will you fly with me tonight?” He held out his hand.

“Warren Worthington III,” she replied, wiping a tear of joy from her cheek, “I thought you would never ask.”

He lifted her in his arms, spread his wings, and they rose into the air, united. The village receded beneath them, the glow of the bonfire waiting for them like a candle in a window, lighting the way home. The Savage Land spread out in every direction, a haven of limitless potential. A symbol of the vast reaches, the dreams, contained within their hearts.