Author's note #1: Although SPIRIT QUEST is a sequel to SHADOW MAN in which Logan's trip to Alkali Lake pits him against Magneto, Mystique and Toad, it is an independent story in its own right.
Author's note #2: Hey, if Marvel first says Logan has blue eyes, then in Ultimate X they're black, I can have them green here for the purpose of the story to make them more unusual and distinctive.
Water. He thought about it. Decided if there was anything this place didn't have, it was H2O. So what was left? Spit -- but his mouth was so parched that the little air he managed to gulp down rasped in his throat like sandpaper. Okay, pee. However, if anything to that effect happened in his nether regions he couldn't feel it. Tears, maybe? He set himself to brooding over his lost past, only to spark a counterproductive slow burn in the process.
People were mostly water. Did blood count? He dragged left arm over to right and stabbed himself with a claw. Green blood dripped on the ground, sizzled a moment, evaporated in a little puff of steam. That was all. At least the left arm worked again, and the right as well, there was that to be grateful for he supposed. Not that it mattered any more. Blisters! Hands, arms and face were covered with them from lying in this frying pan. But . . . no. They'd already popped open and healed time after time and nothing spectacular had happened.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe. With each exhalation the boulder settled on him more firmly, relentlessly. Now it felt like he was swallowing air in teaspoon-sized portions and there were increasingly long spaces of blankness when he suspected he fainted. He stirred after one such blackout to find his head resting on a scorched, gray arm like when he'd first awaken in this hell hole. He looked at Kia, dully watched the soul dart push deeper. The medicine bag twitched in his hand in response.
"Sorry, kid, darlins, bout'chou . . . Kia -- " And now the tears wanted to come, but the heat had wrung him dry long ago. With a snarl he clenched the bag in his fist. Dammit! What the hell did Mystique mean by water? Was she stringing him along? But everything else she'd said had been true. He had to believe that 'water' was correct, also. It was that or give up. Logan might not know who or what he'd been in the past, but one personality trait of his present self he was certain of: he was plenty stubborn, sometimes foolishly so. He wasn't about to give up. Problem was, he was just too dumb to figure out what Mystique's answer meant.
"You got a stupid dad, kids," he muttered to the bag, and since there was nothing else to hit he slammed his fist against the ground, shooting his claws into the hardened mud again and again and again. A little jet of vapor burst from one of the holes. He jerked his head aside to be out of range, blinked, blinked once more, looked over at Kia, laughed, coughed, raised himself up as much as he was able and inserted a claw back into the steaming hole.
As quickly as he could, yet carefully at the same time, he endeavored to enlarge the opening, smooth out the inner surface even as the continual blast of hot air discharged the bits of clay he scraped off. And all the while he worked the steam scalded his skin and heated the claw to an unbearable temperature. The adamantium claw conducted the heat to the adamantium bones in his arm and he felt like he was being cooked from the inside out. He groaned, bit through his lip even as he forced himself to continue. At last, the hole's interior was as round and evenly shaved as he could make it and, as best he could judge, an inch or so shorter than the claw itself. In the floor of the crater, he had hollowed out a small cylindrical tube of baked clay.
With a gasp he yanked the claw from the hole. His right hand and forearm, instead of gray were now brilliant green, which in the real world meant lobster red. The whole arm trembled uncontrollably, but he had neither time nor means to ease the throbbing. Gritting his teeth, Logan dragged the left arm over to the opening, gouged out a trench for the edge of his hand so that the claw by his little finger could lie flat on the ground, and drew the side of the blade across the mouth of the shaft he had just carved out. Again, the superheated steam had the black claw glowing green within seconds. Sweating in agony, he moved the blade across the top of the hole little by little until there was only a narrow gap for the hissing air to escape.
Nothing happened. Had he guessed wrong? Misunderstood Mystique's enigmatic message after all? Holding part of her spirit beast hostage forced her to tell the truth, however, he and she were enemies, not allies. She'd given him his answer in a puzzle, and if he couldn't put it together it was his fault.
But she'd said 'water' and somewhere beneath this floor of baked mud existed a lake of boiling water. He'd been too blind to see it at first, but the lake's presence was evident in the steaming fumarole beside Kia and the cracked plates of earth separated by little jets of vapor. Maybe where he lay the air pressure wasn't sufficient to do what he had planned. If that was the case, then he and Kia were goners. Instead of continuing that line of thought, Logan slid the flat of the claw nearer, closing the tiny gap even more. And what he'd hoped for, but never dared believe, happened.
An ear-piercing whistle suddenly ripped apart the silence of the spirit world. The edge of the claw vibrated as the thrust of steam emitted a shrill, high-pitched spear of sound that stabbed Logan's ears and caused reverberating echoes around the whole crater. Dirt, pebbles, even good-sized rocks trembling from the continual blast slipped, slid, rolled downhill. And now the screeching was drowned out by an agonized shriek. The boulder pinning Logan began to quiver, jerk.
"Eeeeeeeeiiiiiiii -- " Blob's scream soared higher and higher until Logan couldn't hear it. Or maybe he'd gone deaf. He couldn't hear the whistle any more either.
But the claw was still jittering so that he must use all his strength to keep it in place while the rock on his back rolled violently as if it would grind him to dust. And just when Logan could hold the blade steady no longer, the boulder gave a convulsive lurch and with a crack like a thunderclap split in two.
The claw flew off the hole and a miniature fumarole silently wafted upwards. Logan lay in the dirt a few moments enjoying the luxury of filling his lungs with the spirit world's sulfurous air. And coughing as a result. He didn't want to see what the rock had done to him but at last he looked over his shoulder. If there had been anything in his stomach he would have spewed it on the ground.
Boulder Blob lay innocent and innocuous on either side of Logan's body in twin halves of yellow rock, remarkable only for the flat, slick surface that marked the split as if the stone had been intentionally polished to a high sheen. Logan heartily approved. As a pair of burnished stone benches old Fred was downright handsome and he hoped the bastard stayed that way. As for himself . . .
Patches of gray skin floated like moldy islets in a sea of green and here and there glints of light sparked -- adamantium. The only good thing was he felt no pain. In fact, he suddenly realized, he felt no pain from either the dead half of his body or his upper half with its burnt, green arm. He wondered if that meant he was all but dead himself. Logan was so battered and exhausted he welcomed the idea of eternal rest, but he couldn't waste time waiting for death. The Grim Reaper would just have to hustle if it wanted to take him. Using his forearms, Logan dragged himself the few feet over to Kia, raised up as best he could to reach the dart, and pulled.
Dammit! He didn't have enough leverage on his elbows like this. He tried wiggling the thing to loosen it. The soul dart wouldn't wiggle. Infuriated, he all but wormed his way up on the woman in order to use both hands. Despite her transparency, Kia was solid to the touch. If he closed his eyes he could imagine her lying asleep in bed.
She appeared almost as he had seen her that moonlit night: pale, ethereal, beautiful. He brushed a wispy filament of hair away from her face, studied those too-still features. Kelly and Casey had their mother's elegant cheek bones and classic oval face. Connor -- the shape of her almond eyes and straight nose, Kevin -- her mobile, sensitive mouth. Now he leaned over, kissed those faintly warm, ephemeral lips, whispered, "I'll get you outa here, darlin', I promise." And he set himself to working free the soul dart.
A tedious business, but by a combination of wiggling with his burnt hand while pulling with the other he had succeeded in withdrawing the shaft a few inches when the medicine bag began to vibrate. He grabbed it, faintly hearing a thin cry scaling up and up that seemed to originate from the bag itself. What -- ? Kevin! The cry of alarm the baby had given twice before, both times warning of the presence of the enemy. Sabertooth.
Logan jerked his head around, brows knotted in puzzlement and dismay. No tall, shaggy form was to be seen in the crater. Instead, loping easily down the slope that Logan himself had turned into a landslide, came a creature as bizarre and at home in this harsh, desert wasteland as had been the glittering orange snake and the talking yellow boulder -- a purple cougar. Powerful, graceful, merciless, it closed in on its prey. And the crippled prey knew it didn't stand a chance against those fangs and claws.
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