The shock of witnessing hundreds of troops issuing forth from the interdimensional portal wall – some of the warriors human, but most of them not – had frozen the Exiles in place, but to their credit, the effect was only momentary. Tension filled the air in the alternoscription chamber, swelling like a balloon, finally to be exploded by Banshee’s command: “GO!”

The Exiles surged forward. Banshee took to the air to lead the way, flying at the nearest of the airborne demons that had followed Moondark through the portal. The demons were gangly, almost skeletal creatures with decay-hued grayish green flesh and lizard-like heads. Some had large, powerful bat wings rooted at their shoulders, while others had tattered membranes of translucent skin between their wrists and ankles. They bared their fangs at Banshee; the Irish mutant responded in kind, showing the fangs Belasco had given him and screaming waves of despair into the throngs of demons. Some of the monsters wheeled away fearfully, while others attached themselves by tooth and claw to Banshee’s limbs.

Lady Amelia gestured commandingly at one of the demons overhead about to clamp its reptilian jaws onto Banshee’s shoulder. The demon’s form melted into insubstantial mist, and spiraled downward toward Amelia like water draining down an invisible pipe. Amelia held her arms extended to either side, and allowed half of the mist to coalesce around each hand. Then she balled her hands into fists, and the demon’s body took on solid form once again and fell out of the air, its legs and tail twitching on the floor to Amelia’s left, its torso, winged arms and head to her right.

She barely had time for a curt nod of self-satisfaction before Moondark appeared before her. His hands gripped Lady Amelia’s upper arms, each finger like a band of iron. His face was long and drawn, with a coarse and untidy black mustache framing three sides of his mouth. His breath stank of bitter herbs. “You are a dangerous one, my pretty, I can tell,” he leered.

“Unhand me this instant, you … you scum!” Lady Amelia insisted.

Moondark’s only answer was to stare deeply into Lady Amelia’s eyes. As his focus intensified, a horizontal slit appeared in the center or his forehead, and pried open to reveal a third eye. Amelia’s imperious facial expression began to crack with terror, as she struggled to escape Moondark’s grasp. Her capacity for vaporlike teleportation seemed to have been negated by Moondark’s three-orbed gaze, and the mage smiled cadaverously at her helplessness.

Dazzler had no shortage of sonic energies to draw on in the alternoscription chamber, between the rapid gunfire of the shocktroops behind the Green Skull, the caterwauling of Moondark’s demons, and the guttural grunts of the Alpha Primitives. The young mutant gathered the noise into her body and focused it into light, streaming from her hands with the brightness of trillions of photons geometrically exploding. The column of colorful luminescence struck Tyrannus in his crackled crimson face, drowning his visage in light. As the brilliance receded, Tyrannus turned on Dazzler and stalked toward her resolutely.

“You have chosen a poor weapon to use against me,” the Subterranean depot rumbled. “The Lava Men have eyes which can peer to the bottom of the darkest chasm, and can withstand the refulgence of the liquid iron running through the Earth! I am inured to light … and to fire. Can your frail flesh boast the same?”

Tyrannus had drawn near enough to Dazzler that she could feel the intense magma-fueled heat radiating from his glowing basalt hide, a thermal wall of force that caused her to stagger backward. Tyrannus raised his rocklike fists above his absurdly pompadoured head, and prepared to bring them smashing down on Dazzler’s cowering form.

Fiz the Skrull darted between Tyrannus and Dazzler, sending an uppercut at Tyrannus’s jaw while growing to a height of nearly twenty feet. The upward momentum lifted Tyrannus off the ground and sent him flying backwards to the opposite side of the domelike room. Fiz looked down at Dazzler and asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’ll … be fine …” Dazzler panted. “So hot … could barely breathe …”

Before Fiz could respond, a wave of Tyrannoids rushed around his legs. The eerily silent creatures were tall and muscular, with pale and hairless waxy yellow skin, bare except for filthy loincloths. The Tyrannoids had small pointed ears, no noses, and large but expressionless gogglelike eyes. With a packlike mentality, the Tyrannoids attacked Fiz’s giant form as if storming gold and green battlements, climbing up the Skrull’s armored limbs, punching at every available surface. Fiz swatted away several of Tyrannus’s servants, but their numbers were overwhelming. Dazzler added a rain of lasers which picked off several Tyrannoids, yet the creatures still dragged Fiz to his knees and showed no signs of stopping.

Gorgeous George charged in the direction of the Green Skull, plunging into the midst of the numerous soldiers that had followed their leader into the Watcher’s citadel. The soldiers were dressed in green military uniforms that combined Nazi insignia with the trappings of the snake god Set, a blending of Aryan and Egyptian influences that were strikingly sinister. Without breaking rank, the soldiers of the Reich opened fire on Gorgeous George, riddling his pliant body with bullets which caught in the purple muck of his body, occasionally swelling like blisters along his back before bouncing out again. George howled wildly and swung his fists, which were ballooned to many times their normal size, scattering the closest soldiers. From a distance, the Green Skull watched.

As the portal wall’s energies were fading, Jack Winters ran alongside the perimeter and skimmed his hands over the radiation still clinging to the vertical surface. The power soaked into his hands and transformed them from flesh to diamond, and with two hardened weapons at the ends of his arms he launched himself into the fray. He was quickly surrounded by Alpha Primitives, thick-limbed brutes clad in otherworldly dark red skinsuits which left only their pugnacious faces uncovered. Winters slammed his pale white gemlike fists into one broad, simian face after another, working his way through the mob.

Suddenly Winters felt as if his hands had been seized in invisible vices. He watched as several Alpha Primitives made way for their mistress; Crystal’s disheveled form limped toward him, her bloodshot eyes downcast. “Man should have left his flesh as flesh,” she uttered in a singsong rasp. “I can do nothing to flesh. Flesh never listens to me. Air listens. Water listens. Fire listens. Earth listens.” Her crazed, unfocused eyes flicked up and met Winters’s, and she smiled viciously. “Earth. Soil … and stones.”

Winters felt a malicious resonance in his diamond hands, which were still paralyzed in mid-air, leaving him hanging from his wrists like a marionette. Then the insistent throbbing in his left hand sped up, and a heartbeat later his pinkie exploded into sparkling dust. His left thumb burst into shards next. Winters felt more horror than pain, as Crystal’s deranged smile remained fixed in place.

Arilynn was not one of the Exiles, and as they charged forward to meet the forces of Thog’s armies, she moved backwards to distance herself from the battle. She clutched the Orb of Omm in one arm, with the graviscalar halberd in her opposite hand, but she made no immediate move to utilize either one. She was in over her head, not in the deep end of the pool but the deepest part of the ocean, and she had dragged the Exiles there with her, but at least they were accustomed to combat and violence. She was an archivist with delusions of grandeur who had never done anything more confrontational than shouldering past a tourist dawdling in a New York City crosswalk.

Arilynn kept her gaze on the unfolding melee, despite wanting to look away. She would allow herself to retreat, but she would not allow herself to completely ignore what was happening in the Watcher’s citadel, which she had already begun to think of as her own domain. As she watched the soldiers and demons and Tyrannoids and Alpha Primitives overwhelming her doomed mutant friends, she saw Thog coming for her.

Thog gamboled across the alternoscription chamber like some hideous amalgam of a frog and an insect, his sinewy blood-red limbs propelling him in short hops. The demon lord of Sominus drew within two feet of Arilynn and splayed his taloned fingers, which were already sparking with eldritch potency. A nimbus of blue-black electricity grew around each of Thog’s hands, and then streamed together in a bolt aimed straight at Arilynn’s heart.

Arilynn instinctively brought the Orb of Omm up in front of her chest; Thog’s magical thrust splashed against the spider-god’s gem and dissipated into the air in all directions. With a scowl Thog advanced again, slashing claws at Arilynn’s face. Arilynn parried the demon’s initial swipe with the graviscalar halberd, in a smooth defensive maneuver that surprised even her, but Thog quickly recovered and a moment later was digging his talons into Arilynn’s shoulders, forcing her to the floor.

Arilynn’s backside slammed hard into the plating. She maintained her grip on the halberd, and kept the Orb of Omm tucked in the bend of her arm, but Thog’s weight pinned her and left her no means of utilizing either of the artifacts. The demon was so close she could smell the musk of him, redolent of burnt offerings and unspeakable filth, reminding Arilynn of a time she had walked past the remains of a tenement building that burned to the ground. “I will see you dead, mortal,” Thog snarled at her. “As dead as the former master of this place. Uatu’s spoils are mine and mine alone …”

Arilynn spared herself the trial of trying to think of an appropriately heroic response and devoted all her efforts to trying to wriggle free of Thog’s grasp. But the demon was inhumanly strong and maintained his position of leverage over Arilynn. Then a brilliant burst of light coming from somewhere behind Arilynn cast the harsh features of Thog’s face in sharp contrasts of red and shadowy black. Thog looked in the direction of the lightburst, his brow tightening angrily as he squinted into the glare. “Fools!” Thog roared. “This moon citadel is but the first stepping stone in my enslavement of the entire Earth! All those who rush here to oppose me merely hasten their own demise!”

A gruff male voice, originating from the vicinity of the lightburst, answered. “Heard it all before, ugly. Doesn’t exactly mean much. Now get off the lady.”

The wooden pump and steel barrel of a shotgun slid into Arilynn’s upturned field of vision, with the muzzle of the barrel coming to a stop an inch from Thog’s forehead. Thog opened his mouth to speak, and the shotgun’s wielder pulled the trigger. A small explosion of unholy flames blossomed from the barrel with an ear-piercing scream and enough otherworldly force to blow Thog off his perch atop Arilynn and send the demon soaring across the alternoscription chamber. “Get off the lady, please,” the gruff man added sardonically.

Arilynn rolled over onto her stomach and rose to face the new arrivals. Her rescuer was dressed in faded biker leathers and an ancient-looking duster that nearly brushed the floor. His hair was long, tied back in a ponytail, his cheeks were covered with stubble, and his eyes were hidden behind aviator-style sunglasses. He rested the shotgun casually against his shoulder as he offered Arilynn a hand up. “John Blaze,” he said, by way of introduction.

“Arilynn Williams,” she answered.

“We’re the Seekers,” he added, indicating with a tilt of his head the group just behind him.

Arilynn took in the group. She immediately recognized the red-haired girl in the yellow, orange and black flame-motif costume as Firestar, and the hooded, caped man in white as Moon Knight. A figure in motorcycle boots, jeans, and a padded leather jacket decorated in metal spikes, with a head devoid of flesh and encircled in flames could only be the Ghost Rider, although Arilynn knew there had been more than one being to claim to that title.

The most imposing members of the group were harder for Arilynn to identify. A massive creature bore a strong resemblance to the Hulk, green skin encasing superhuman musculature, clad only in the torn remains of purple slacks, but the monster also had a kinship with Ghost Rider, its head a bare purple skull, burning with spectral bluish-white flames, in contrast to the first’s white skull burning in yellow fire. At the back of the group, closing the brightly glowing portal that had transported the Seekers to the Watcher’s citadel, was a tall woman in gleaming armor, crowned by a diadem that sported two wickedly curving horns.

But the least imposing member of the ensemble was the one Arilynn found the most intriguing. Standing at the physical head of the team, and clearly the spiritual leader of the Seekers, was a beautiful blonde woman dressed simply in hip-hugging blue jeans and a tight t-shirt which showed off her curvaceousness. Her hair was loose, past her shoulders, and a dragon tattoo wrapped itself around her left arm. She smiled at Arilynn and said, “We heard there were some demons causing trouble.”

“You could say that,” Arilynn agreed. Before she could elaborate the plates under their feet began to buckle and were sent flying by huge tentacles rising up, green and black, mottled and slimy and questing blindly for bodies to grasp.

“Magik, stay with Arilynn,” the blonde ordered, and the armored woman moved immediately, drawing a long broadsword. “Everyone else get in there and help me get to Thog. Looks like he’s decided casting spells from a distance is better than up-close combat, but I’ll beg to differ.”

“Here!” Arilynn called out. “If you’re going to duel with Thog, take this!” She lobbed the black gem at the blonde.

Jennifer Kale caught the mystic stone. “Huh, an Orb of Omm,” she mused, then shouted, “Thanks!” and ran into the fray, leading her fellow Seekers.

The woman called Magik reached Arilynn’s side as a glistening tentacle whipped toward them. Magik sliced through the bonless limb with her Soul Sword and spilled gallons of its ichor onto the floor; the tentacle reared back in mute pain. “Stay close to me,” Magik commanded Arilynn.

Another tentacle swooped in from Magik’s blind side, but Arilynn spotted it, and hacked at its revolting surface with the graviscalar halberd. The technologically forged weapon bit into the tentacle and sent ripples radiating through the dank green and black skin, turning the tentacle a pale gray. When the ripples subsided, the tentacles disintegrated to powder. Magik nodded approvingly, then spun to counter another encroaching tentacle with her sword.

Across the chamber, the Seekers added the strength of their arms to the Exiles’. Moon Knight vaulted into the midst of the troops of the Reich of Set, throwing silver crescent moon darts that whizzed through the air and lodged in soldier’s throats and eye sockets, drawing sprays of blood. The Hulk with the fiery skull of Vengeance jumped as well, his powerful legs launching him over all of the troops; he crashed in front of the Green Skull himself.

“Gott in Himmel!” the Green Skull managed, stepping back fearfully.

“Nein,” Zarathos responded with sadistic pleasure. “Teufel aus der Hölle.” The gamma-powered Spirit of Vengeance backhanded the Green Skull and sent the servant of Set sprawling away.

John Blaze made his way to the spot where Moondark held the limp form of Lady Amelia in his clutches. “Hey, I remember you,” Blaze said, catching Moondark’s attention just before pumping his shotgun and unloading its hellfire charge in Moondark’s face. “Didn’t like you the last time, either,” Blaze added, catching Amelia as she fell from Moondark’s hands.

Fiz the Skrull was nearly buried beneath a living mountain of Tyrannoids, and Ghost Rider began to scale the slope of waxy yellow backs. He flailed the length of his serpentine chain and sent it scourging against the mass of Tyrannoids again and again as he ascended; each time the metal links wrapped around d a Tyrannoid’s arm or leg or neck, Ghost Rider would snap the chain back and send the subterranean hurtling through the air.

Dazzler watched the flame-skulled creature’s relentless progress for a moment, then looked around to see where else her assistance might be needed. She spotted Jack Winters at Crystal’s mercy, and left Fiz to Ghost Rider. Soon Dazzler was clearing a path through the mass of Alpha Primitives with an assault of multi-colored lasers.

Firestar took to the air in a halo of radiant heat and flew into the droves of winged demons, blasting beams of microwaves in all directions as she battled her way toward the savaged Banshee. Most of the demons were easily cowed by the electromagnetic heat which seemed to afflict them from the inside out, and wheeled away from the young mutant in pain and terror. Firestar immolated the last two demons that refused to release Banshee, struggling to keep her gag reflex under control as the smell of their charred flesh filled her nostrils. Banshee was nearly unconscious, and Firestar lowered him to the floor.

No sooner had she let go of Banshee than several of the stronger, braver demons descended on her and hauled her up toward the ceiling. Firestar unleashed waves of microwave energy which brought forth smoke from the demons’ hides, but they continued to manhandle her. She struggled in their grip, wincing as their fangs and claws cut at her flesh. She was about to scream for help when a thundering bolt of blue and yellow slammed into the largest of her attackers and knocked it out of the air. The comet-like blur slowed and resolved into a human form which said, “Hey, Angelica. Long time no see. How’s things?”

“Rich?” Firestar gaped, recognizing the starburst-crested helmet of the man called Nova. “What are you doing here?”

Nova punched a demon, crumpling its reptilian snout with a fleshy crunch, before responding. “Protecting the Earth from interdimensional invaders, you know, the usual,” he shrugged. “That’s pretty much the Warriors’ mission statement these days.” He pointed across the chamber, where the rest of the Warriors were emerging from Doorman’s inky black gateway.

Namorita strode through the shadowy aperture, golden hair streaming and pale blue skin glistening, and immediately charged into the horde of Tyrannoids. Almost immediately the field leader of the Warriors was met by Tyrannus himself, and the Atlantean and the Lava Man grappled fiercely. Atlas was close on Namorita’s winged heels, and as soon as he was fully through the gateway his red-and-bronze-clad form expanded until his cobalt-blue shoulderpads were twenty-five feet above the floor. Atlas waded into the Tyrannoids and stomped as many as came within reach beneath his boots.

Turbo was the next arrival in the Watcher’s citadel, a bright blue and polished steel streak roaring through the air via her battlesuit fans. She climbed to join Nova and Firestar and directed channels of high-velocity air at the winged demons, buffeting them into the walls and dome of the chamber. Jack of Hearts flew out of Doorman’s gateway behind Turbo, but steered himself towards the ranks of the Aryan-Egyptian infantry. A rain of concussive Zero energy fell on the troops from above, as Jack of Hearts worked to create breathing room for Moon Knight and Gorgeous George. Several of the Reich of Set soldiers trained their weapons upward, and bullets whined through the air, spanging off Jack’s playing-card styled armor.

Jocasta and Silhouette were the last of the Warriors to complete the transit. The silvery feminine-shaped robot and the graceful mistress of shadows headed for the Alpha Primitives; Jocasta shoved brutes in her path aside with augmented mechanical force, while Silhouette dispatched those blocking her way by cranking the voltage of the tasers in her crutches to the highest setting.

Arilynn tried to keep one eye on the hostilities while defending herself against the grotesque tentacles undulating all around her and Magik. She had been heartened when the Seekers and the Warriors had arrived to reinforce the Exiles, but the fact remained that Thog was still far too well positioned to win a battle of attrition. The superheroes in the citadel were only twenty, while Thog’s followers numbered in the hundreds.

Arilynn jumped over the slithering tip of a tentacle and saw that Atlas was in danger of being overwhelmed by Tyrannoids just as Fiz had been. She chopped at the quivering limb, turning it to inert particles, and saw the Green Skull rise, his snake-like visage cracked but held high; the Green Skull threw himself at the Hulk and hissed a noxious cloud into his foe’s conflagrant purple mein, causing the Hulk to fall in paroxysms of pain. Magik reached across and cleaved another tentacle with her Soul Sword, while Arilynn saw Crystal summoning a torrentially strong geyser of water that caught Dazzler and Silhouette in its drowning rush, along with several Alpha Primitives for whom Crystal obviously was unconcerned. Arilynn ducked a spray of ichor and watched Moondark raise John Blaze off the floor in an ectoplasmic noose, while Blaze kicked and thrashed helplessly. Arilynn disintegrated another tentacle with the graviscalar halberd and caught sight of Nova, Firestar and Turbo hemmed in on all sides by shrieking demons growing increasingly bolder.

Finally, Arilynn sighted Jennifer Kale and Thog engaged in a mystical battle of wills on the opposite side of the chamber. They seemed evenly matched, Jennifer’s face as composed as a statue’s except for trembling beads of sweat, Thog’s features twisted in defiant rage. Around them, miniature galaxies of arcane puissance swirled and churned. Then, without warning, Jennifer swayed dizzily and dropped to her knees.

Thog howled like a vindicated animal, and turned toward Arilynn. Despite the distance across the large chamber, it seemed as if Thog looked directly into her eyes.

The tentacles disappeared. From the same holes in the floor, however, there emerged masses of flying pestilent insects, far too small to be menaced by sword or halberd. The insects filled the air all around Magik and Arilynn, and Arilynn did not need the Watcher’s stores of knowledge or her own archivist’s training to know with absolute certainty that the mere touch of them would be slow, poisonous death.

TO BE CONCLUDED...!!!