Spirit Quest Chapter 9: Spirit World by DreamWeaver
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.
He was aflame, lying on a heap of smoldering, rotten eggs. That much Logan knew the instant before a trickle of sweat slipped under a closed lid, stung his eye. He squinted, blinked, looked down the length of stinking, ash gray flesh his head was resting on. Revolted, he wrenched himself off the horror and the thing twitched with his movement. Not surprising. It was his arm. He swallowed the bile that surged in his throat both at the sight of the monstrosity and the stench of its foulness, and furrowed the loose, yellow soil with black-nailed, gray fingers as his hand closed into a fist. Arm and hand felt normal eventhough they looked and smelled as if they belonged to an especially ripe cadaver. There were no burns, no blisters, no pain, despite the ashy-cinder color and awful reek. The clue came when he turned the hand over and saw the smear of iridescent green on the palm. He sat up to peer at his gray chest emblazoned with an equally vivid green handprint.
With a grimace of disgust he got to his feet, the only noise that broke the silence the scuffing sounds of his movement. Okay, so he looked like a zombie in orange jeans and green paint, but that didn't matter as long as everything worked -- He shot out his claws. Black. Why not? The colors here were screwed up. Maybe it was because of the light. His green hand shaded eyes all but squeezed shut against the glare.
There was no sign of the fire he had jumped into, no indication of the round room he'd been in only seconds? hours? ago. On all sides stretched a flat, featureless wasteland of hard-packed earth covered by a thin layer of pebbles and sandy dirt. And apparently, the sulfurous smell was a part of that landscape, rather than emanating from himself. The ground was yellow, parched, sterile. Not a green plant, not even a dead tree, broke the monotony of the land as it dissolved into heat waves of yellowish haze.
Dust storm? he asked himself. But his survey showed that same haze rising, curving all around him like the sides of a brass cauldron and here he was in the middle of this fetid, airless stew pot. The haze bled upwards, solidified into the burnished sky which hung low and heavy -- the cauldron's lid ready to drop and crush. That hard, metallic, sunless sky appeared to be the source of the garish light as well as the broiling heat that burned the soles of his bare feet, ate into his back and shoulders, seared his flesh where the green paint striped his spine, splotched his chest -- as if here in this place the green of the paint was acid.
And where was here? The spirit world. Good thing everybody in this hell hole is already dead, Logan thought, and wondered how long he was going to last before the heat sucked him dry, spit him out in a little heap of salt crystals. Scowling, he started off in no particular direction, for there were no directions except in relation to himself -- before him, behind him, his right, his left. But walking, even if it was aimless, gave an instant of relief every time he lifted a foot off the burning soil. And the shuffle of his bare feet gave sound to the deadness all around.
He cast no shadow, he noticed. The blaze of light was so intense it permitted no darkness. Or maybe . . . Maybe he was already dead? Folklore said spirits didn't have shadows. But then if he was dead why was he hurting so damn much? 'Cause he was damned? came the sudden, cheerless thought.
Logan halted, unaware of the fire scorching his feet as a wave of memories, all of them bad and black, flooded the space behind his eyes. Uncountable times when he'd been mean, cruel, scornful, belittling -- and that was only the minor stuff. What of the thousands of times he'd picked fights just as an excuse to injure, savage, maim some stranger when his real target was himself? Then the wild, crazy-mad times he'd gone totally berserk, killed . . . and reveled in it. And all that foul sludge was what his mind managed to dredge up for just the last fifteen years -- What might not be chalked against him from before?
He found himself crouched in the dirt clutching the little leather bag that hung from his neck. I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . . Too little, too late the words whirled round and round in his head like caged mice in a wheel. And the funny thing -- if anything in this place could be funny -- was he didn't even know who he was saying it to. The universe? His victims? Himself? Even funnier, if this was hell and he was here for the duration, what was unbearable was not the stench and the stifling heat, but the emptiness, the solitude. Logan had always believed he could do very nicely without people, thank you. Just let him loose in the wilds with its forests and creatures and he was happy. But here, alone in this nothingness, he discovered he didn't like himself much. He wasn't very good company.
*You can't help Mom by sitting on your butt!*
Startled, Logan jerked around, saw a leggy, young wolf at his side. However, the cream and gray of its coat was reversed, the light yellow on top so that the animal all but blended into the land. Only its red eyes stood out from the background. The wolf tilted its head as if studying him and its lip curled back in disgust.
*You gonna get up or not?*
"Connor?" he asked aloud, suddenly realizing that somehow he'd heard the wolf in his head instead of with his ears.
*Here comes Kelly* the wolf said for answer, and a white raven with an orangey sheen rather than blue swooped down to land on Logan's shoulder.
*Hi* and the raven gave him a peck on the cheek.
The kids' spirit animals -- Grandfather had said they would help him, that he wouldn't be alone. And if the kids were here then Kia was still alive and so was he. Now that he had experienced what he believed to be death he hoped the real thing was total oblivion. Weird, from someone always searching for his memories, his past. He laughed and it sounded hollow and feeble, swallowed up by the void.
Logan got to his feet, brushed off his jeans. "We gotta find your mom," he stated, all business to hide the dread of moments ago.
*Casey's up there looking for her now* said the raven.
Eyes slitted, he peered at the brazen sky and could just make out a circling falcon overhead, its silver-gray color, instead of the normal bronze, clear against the yellow. Where's Kevin? he was going to ask, then remembered the round, lumpy cloud above the sleeping baby and Grandfather's name for him. Logan hefted the little, leather medicine bag in his palm, grinned. Let sleeping babies lie, he decided, and let it hang as before. But no sooner had he released the bag than it abruptly increased in weight so that the cord dug into the back of his neck.
The heavier the bag, the closer Kia is to death -- Grandfather's words echoed in Logan's ears. But he didn't want to scare the kids so he silently endured the cutting string and kept his eyes on the falcon.
*That way!* Kelly squawked, lifted into the sky.
But Logan had already seen the falcon's sudden swerve and sprinted to keep Casey in sight. With each breath it felt like he was choking down searing, putrid grease, and the wind of his passage, instead of giving the false sensation of freshness, was more like racing through the scalding steam of a boiling cesspool. The medicine bag suddenly jerked with even greater weight, throwing Logan off balance so that he staggered, fell to hands and knees wheezing, drawing in great gulps of poisonous flame as beads of sweat simmered on his skin.
*Get up!* The wolf nudged him in the ribs with a cold nose.
Surprised, Logan glanced at Connor. Could anything in this place be cold? He put out a hand, stroked cool, silky fur. The feel of it revived him like a drink of water. He stood, began running once more, chasing after the falcon, wolf loping at his side.
Slowly, so very slowly, the landscape changed, and Logan knew relief when he realized that. He was beginning to fear that he was rushing about in circles, that the falcon was executing wide, looping turns, still searching. But now he stumbled over pebbles grown to the size of golf balls, then tennis balls, and his bare feet bruised, bled on the rough ground, to heal and bruise and bleed again. The blood, of course, was sickly green.
The cord of the heavy medicine bag sawed against his neck until it also was slicked with green, but with the bag's constant swing the skin had no chance to heal and he felt acid trickles of blood burn down his back. With each step the bag was becoming more and more of a burden and it was a real effort to lift his head against its weight. Finally, he gave up on that, content to lace his fingers in the wolf's cool, thick fur and be guided by Connor while he applied himself to avoiding the stones.
So it was, concentrating on the upward-sloping ground, that Logan was confused at first when the wolf trotted them straight to a knee-high rock and stopped. On top of the rock perched a silver falcon. "Casey?"
As always with the twins, it was Kelly who did the talking, even when it wasn't really talking but thoughts in his head. The raven now landed on his shoulder. *Casey says Mom's just over this hill but -- *
Her presence in his mind blinked off like a light turned out. He looked around, but there was no raven on his shoulder, no falcon before him, no wolf at his side. Instead, at his feet there was a glittering orange snake the thickness of his arm, coiled and ready to strike.
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