Chapter 57- Crimson Dawn

The Citadel, - Entry Hall 17-3-2008 (Evening)

Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock- (Psylocke/ Assassin)

Betsy watched as the SHIELD agents and her fellows walked into the portal, till only she, Wanda, and Nath'aniel remained. She looked at him and said. "I need to go with you, don't I?" Nath nodded. “Do you have a plan?”

“Stop the ritual, whatever it takes, and come back home.” the mage answered.

‘Not much of a plan.’ Betsy heard from Wanda’s mind.

“What do you need from me?” She asked after ignoring the younger woman’s thoughts.

"Give me time to stop them." Was his answer. Betsy nodded, and they both looked at Wanda.

"Oh, right. The door only fits two. I'll hover at a breathable level for you." The young mutant said before walking into the portal.

When they were alone she looked at him again and asked. “What is a Noble Phantasm?”

“A power, your ultimate power.” Nath'aniel gave the short answer before really explaining it to her. “Servants, which I now am certain you are, are reinforced in three ways. First, you were remade into the best version of yourself. Second, you are educated by your class. And finally, you are empowered by the stories you have left behind and also by what came before you.'

"This is why all of your hair is purple because people believe it is. And the Noble Phantasm is the ultimate expression of your tale. What it is, and how it manifests is unique to you. 'How do I activate it?' I don't know, but you will, when the time is right." He then offered her his hand. She took it, and he gave her a comforting squeeze before he started to walk towards the portal.

He waited for her and the two of them took the last step together. They stepped onto a platform of air that he conjured with his bladed staff once they were through. This high-up reminded Betsy of satellite photos. Even most of the buildings were too small to really make out, only the closer glowing Gypsy and the massive statue could really be seen this high up.

"Are you going to make steps again like before?" Psylocke asked. She had felt the pull of their bond's 'leash' before and didn't really want to be hindered by it during a fight, so while she could spirit jump down there she might be at the limits of their bond.

Before he answered he released her hand and started writing a multi-character spell with his index finger's nail. The symbols were much thinner and more precise this way. The light and color of the symbols reminded Betsy of the magic he used against the Nazis. When Nath was done writing he crushed the fifteen-character word in his fist.

Then his flash changed and twisted, she flinched at the pain she both felt through the bond and heard as he transformed. His skin grew a thick layer of red muscle. His earlobes stretched and drooped down into points, almost like earrings. His lips peeled back to reveal his teeth were now black and sharp, and lastly, between the gap between his vest and pants, a pair of leathery wings had burst from his back.

"I planned on gliding down," Nath'aniel answered his voice now much lower and raspier. They shared a look, Betsy was very glad that his transformation hadn't changed his eyes. Then he leaped off the platform.

Betsy thought about just vanishing here, but then recalled the loss of mass she had as a spirit, so instead she too dove off the hardened air.

As she fell, she watched him. Before he reached Gypsy, Nath’aniel spread his wings and slowed his descent. Then before she passed him, she vanished. The world became dull again, as her senses fell in on themselves.

Her mind reached out and she felt them, the mass of angry simple minds that made up the majority of these Sun people. Some were brighter to her, while scattered here and there were even brightest minds. Those brightest were like normal people to her, fully thinking people. ‘Half-bloods’ and ‘Sorcerers,’ Assassin identified them for her.

She still fell, but she was slowing down now that her mass was reduced. Betsy materialized just enough to jump and adjust her trajectory, and then she sought out the others that came before her with her mind.

Wolfsbane and the SHIELD assassin, Hawkeye, were outside the main steps of the temple fighting alongside several sorcerers. These sorcerers were different from the first ones she felt. Parts of their minds were tainted with some kind of dark foreign energy.

Inside the temple proper she felt the woman that gave Nath’aniel the story of how his parents died. She was fighting three Sun sorcerers, while an ally of hers fought their half-blood guards. Betsy was pleased to see their minds were clear of the tainted energy of the other three she felt.

Betsy materialized atop the outer wall of the temple, just above and behind Wolfsbane and Hawkeye. She took a moment to scan the thoughts of these tainted sorcerers, only the oldest of them seemed to notice, but he was too busy trying a weave a healing spell over his female companion to stop her. Betsy saw no thoughts of betrayal in them, so she would leave these and their mystery for another day.

“Hawkeye, Wolfsbane, this is Psylocke, I am above you. I can feel that the others landed in the city proper, so I am going to go to them to help, can you hold the point here?” Betsy telepathically told them.

“Doing fine, go.” were Wolfsbane’s thoughts as she tackled and mauled a half-blood that had tried to charge the archer.

“Woo, that is weird… But yeah, I got this. Tell the others not to get themselves killed.” Was Hawkeye's reply, as he fired a fat-tipped arrow above the heads of the next batch of warriors. After a few seconds, the arrow exploded and rained shrapnel and darts down peppering the Sun people, but not killing them.

Before she left she sent a warning to Wolfsbane. "Watch those sorcerers carefully, they're different somehow." Then Betsy dematerialized again and drifted towards the closest group she could feel.

The young black man, Trip, and Pyro were held up in a doorway, shooting their guns at a pair of half-bloods and half dozen regular warriors. The bullets were being buffeted by a spell cast by one of the Sun sorcerers, he was making a hot wind that pushed against the small projectiles, weakening the bullets' impacts.

As she materialized on the roof of a stone house, one of the half-bloods threw a spear at them. The two roll back into the house, but then a second later the plum of Pyros's flame thrower engulfed the spear completely. The plum then turned into a bull that charged the natives. The other half-blood wrestled the bull to the ground somehow.

Now that she had her full senses again, Betsy could see that the pair had already slayed a half-blood and more than a dozen warriors. She watched as the fire bull seemed to be absorbed by the Enhanced, as it did his hair lengthened and his wounds seemed to heal. After a moment the fire was completely suppressed and absorbed by the muscular man.

‘So their Enhanced are half fire giants?’ Betsy thought as she willed a bow into existence. She materialized two psychic arrows and fired them into the backs of the half-bloods. Then she jumped and vanished while in mid-air.

One arrow stuck the spear-chucker in the base of the neck, paralyzing him from the head down. The other just got the fire wrestler in the shoulder. The warriors turned and tried to locate where the arrows had been shot from. So they missed her materializing in their midst as she plunged her short sword into the throat of their sorcerer.

As she pulled her blade the dead Sun person coughed his last words. Then she went to work. Slash at the closest, tearing the artery in his left leg. Followed by a lunge into the back of the guy in front of him, destroying his kidneys. She blocked the first club swing as she willed a throwing knife into being and threw it into the face of number five. Betsy then kneed number four in his unguarded balls, before willing a psychic sword into his heart.

She left the blade in his chest, and waited, as Pyro shot the last one near her in the head with his pistol. Betsy stared and took a lot of her willpower not to make a face at the thoughts going through the still-moving half-blood. She now knew why these two were here. They were guarding women and children who were hiding deeper in the house they took for cover.

The half-blood shook off the numbness in his hand from trying to remove the arrow from his shoulder. “Kek Suporian.” The man barked at her. ‘Am Champion!’ his mind translated for her.

"No, you're just dead," Betsy muttered before dematerializing. She could make out him looking for her, but he was too slow. She reappeared behind him and plunged her sword into his heart as she fell back down to the ground.

Once she had good footing, Betsy kicked the corpse off of her sword.

She then looked at the two stunned gunmen. She briefly looked past their surface thoughts of surprise and ordered the SHIELD agent. "Gather the women and children in a back room, and use one of your grenades to collapse the entrance. We can dig them out once the battle is over."

“Wait, what?” the agent asked.

"You're going to argue that we need to protect the people in there, but we have limited fighters and countless enemies. So we do not have the luxury of spreading ourselves thin if we want to get through this alive. So corral the people, blow up the entrance, and move on to help support the others." Psylocke stated at the younger man.

Pyro smiled as he muttered. "Looks like we got our old Psylocke back." Then he took the time to change the clip in his pistol before test-firing his flame thrower. Then he asked the young man. "You want me to corral them?"

“No, I got it. Good compromise, by the way.” Trip agreed, before stepping back into the building.

Once they were alone she heard Pyro ask her in her thoughts. “So what’s the plan? An accident while we’re fighting?”

“No, that would bring Nath’aniel into question. We will try our best to get everyone out alive. But if someone attacks you or another mutant, defend yourself or them. Nothing intentional, don’t pull an Exodus.” Betsy sent him back, before switching to actual speech so that maybe Trip could hear her over his small arms fire in the distance. “You two head up this road, and take a left after three intersections. It will lead you to the main temple where our people are already fighting. There are also some friendly magic users there and around the area. So if you see people in Asian style robes hold your fire. You hear all that?”

Pyro nodded, and Trip repeated. "Asian clothes are friendly." Before he shouted. "Fire in the hole!" then he triggered a hand detonator. And a pair of explosions went off collapsing the front room. Then he added. “Claymores are more precise, and I’d rather feed these assholes my grenades.”

“Not sure how good it will work on the big guys. They seem to absorb my fire.” Pyro pointed out. Betsy didn’t feel the need to share her thoughts on the men, given that the concepts were not really hers to share. Rather it was Assassin’s insights.

However, she did add. "Hawkeye had an order that I was to relay to you." The young man perked up at that. "'Don't get yourself killed.' Now I am off to find some of the others."

Then she dematerialized. Before she left though she felt Pyro say and think. "That goes for you too, babe."

As she drifted off, she felt the orgy of chaos and violence that was ongoing in this besieged city. There were not just the Sun people, Citadel members, and those odd sorcerers about. There were also the beast men and human slaves of the city rioting in an attempt to earn their freedom.

That and some of the factions of the Sun people seemed to be fighting each other, either settling old disputes or just trying to remove a perceived rival. Betsy thought that maybe she should aid some of these lesser battles, as she drifted about, but then she recalled Nath’s answer to that Zala woman.

‘I will not intervene in local tribal politics.’ That was his reasoning for denying the Sun woman in the first place. That she thought she would have been able to rule these savages with Nath’s and the Brotherhood’s help was her own delusion.

‘And now she believes this Giant will just let her take over.’ Betsy thought as she moved towards the next group of allies she could feel in the city.

They were not here to police these people. They were here to stop a potential disaster. That some rather vile men were dying because of their attempt, was only a side perk.

Betsy then felt an oddity in the minds she was detecting, so she deviated from the last group that she needed to meet. She materialized atop the roof of a store overlooking a marketplace of some kind.

Four robed people were still alive, as she could still feel their muted thoughts, but they were down and would soon die without her aid. Standing atop them was a pair of minotaurs trying to push back a rather large gathering of warriors and half-bloods. If there had been Sun sorcerers here, then they were already among the dead down there. Because before she materialized she couldn't sense any.

No, it was the thoughts of these two large beast men that drew her here.

The first didn't impress her all that much as the ax-wielding minotaur thought ‘I must not bring shame to our clan.’ The armored bull-man was reduced to using the large axe one-handed as his left arm hung limply from all the damage it had sustained before she arrived.

However, the other ones did. ‘We must pay back the mages. Our clan debts must be repaid.’ The other hammer-wielding minotaur thought. As he bashed in the head of yet another half-blood. However, the bullman did leave himself open to a pair of spears, which burned through his leather armor and sheared into his ribs.

Betsy didn't rush to their aid. That would only get her wounded and possibly killed too. So she took a second to read the battlefield before she started, as she did the last time. She knelt, and while she didn't want to risk her weapon's edge, in the end she still stabbed it into the roof beneath her. Before she willed a bow into her hand, but this time, she didn’t use it to distract. No, she needed those sorcerers to live and explain their thoughts, so her plan was to pull some of them to her.

So Betsy fired an arrow. It hit a half-blood in the lower leg, causing him to lose balance and fall atop a pair of warriors. The next shot took a still distracted half-blood in the temple, making the large lion headdress-wearing man drop like a stingless puppet. Her third took longer to will into being, so the Sun people's closet people had both found her and threw an in accurate volley at her.

Her last shot missed the target, impaling the neighboring warrior instead. More spears were thrown at her, so she let the bow become a sword and rolled out of the way as a spear or two stuck where she had been. Betsy rolled back to snatch up her steel sword before she dematerialized.

And as quickly as she could she bolted through the horde and rematerialized on the other side of the marketplace. With a sword in either hand, she lasted out, her psychic sword used mostly to delay or parry burning spearheads, while she quickly cut and slashed a trio of warriors in the back.

When their buddies turned around to face her, she vanished again, to reappear in another part of the main pack. As she materialized her left foot landed into a puddle of blood, when this happened something clicked inside of her again .

The tattoo on her face slowly warmed up and words began to fall from her lips. “I am a daughter of the Hand… A tool of my Master…. Our reach is without limit… Cut us down and we will return…. Rejoice in this morning… in this Crimson Dawn.”

As she chanted she parried and blocked all attacks directed at her. Missed by everyone fighting, but noticed by a few cowering Sun people in the nearby buildings was the suddenly moving and rising of all the spilled blood from the dirt and stone road.

First in drops, then in steady streams as the blood floated upward. It collected and gathered in the air above the ongoing battle, forming a massive orb of blood. At the word 'Dawn' she and the Sun warriors and champions vanished.

The hammer-wielding minotaur stumbled when the man was about to strike just vanished. Then he muttered. "What?! Where did they all go?”

“Don’t question it, heal them before they die, I’ll stand watch.” His brother scolded him.

The healthier bullman moved and began chanting a weak healing spell. The young sorcerer below him wouldn't be able to fight again, but he would live. The Englishman nodded thanks before pointing and screaming.

The minotaur only had a moment to look and grab the recently healed man before he move them both out of the way of a falling dead body. The body smacked the ground hard, as it seemed as if all the fluids from the corpse had already been drained and added to the ball of blood in the air.