61/No Rest for the Mutated

No Rest for the Mutated
Date of Scene:	22 February 2020
Location:	Hammer Bay
Synopsis:	Was it ever a choice?
Cast of Characters:	Illyana Rasputina, Stephen Strange

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Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Hammer Bay. It looks as though a cosmic hammer landed with devastating force. Few things stir in the remnants of a capital city. Helicopters chug along the coastline littered with crumbled buildings and cranes fallen into the churning Indian Ocean. Aid workers pick among wreckage in cordoned off zones while experts responding to a disaster of epic proportions try to make sense of the impossible.

Twenty million Russians died in the Second World War. It wasn't in a single go. Fifty million perished worldwide from the Spanish influenza pandemic, but they hardly fell to a mighty stroke rendering them dead. Here, an act of atrocity stains the psychic plane as much as the physical.

Among broken buildings lie countless bodies, innumerable numbers of humans and mutants, metahumans and vaguely supernatural creatures held together in human form. Far too many to bury, innumerable graves littered all around the seat of power where Erik Lensherr rightly out to sit. A grave among the charnelhouse. No wonder efforts to deal with the situation barely scratch the surface, for how can anyone justifiably make sense of the sheer magnitude of death unlike anything in the last sixty years? How can anyone coordinate a rescue among the last dance of civilisation before it came crashing down on a half-moon isle synonymous with death? For generations to come, they will speak of Genosha, and know that lightning-crash pang of destruction, a paroxysm of fatality unimaginable. What is 16 million? Even if only half died, eight million is hardly understandable.

Which is where one can find Illyana Rasputina, making good on a failure to be there in the first place. Not an act of solidarity, this business of shifting through shattered avenues with echoes of distant life fading away. Her work is hideous, bringing dignity to the deceased much as one can. A perfect halo of gold hair backlit by lightning alone marks a spell to siphon her constitution from the battered earth, a continual loop borrowed and returned. Construction equipment is still on its way through the Suez or the Straits of Malacca. While she's no Hulk, she can cause whole buildings to vanish or scythe away vast quantities of concrete, brick, or rock to expose the fallen people sandwiched against the bosom of the earth. Those dead are treated with respect, much as she can give dealing with a crumbling apartment. At least ten lie under curtains and sheets.

This, the work of the Demon Queen of Limbo.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Next to Illyana, the bodies lied, obscured from the land they were standing and occupying less than a week ago. No at this point they are lost to the land of the living and are held within the hands of death and yet...

    Stephen seems to fade into being, as if molecules seem to gather from the very air to materialize into the sorcerer supreme as he takes a step into this plane of existence. "No one was ready. Dieties are ready to claim the lost and yet there is a dam upon this now great well of souls." Stephen says as he steps up beside Illyana, his eyes looking forward and emotionless, the wizard with the worst bedside manner stands surveying the devestation before and seeming as if we was detached from this world.

    "Early counts have this as fifty times worse than the atomic bombs." Stephen says with a look down towards the blankets before the two mages as if it was the first time he's seen them and slowly turns his head to Illyana.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
And yet. Rest never comes to the wicked or the sublime, not under such conditions. Golden light engulfs another pile of rubble, complete with a rainbow-printed tapestry for a wall and an ugly bedspread that would have been embarrassed to show its face in a 1970s department store, stained and faded now. On her own, Illyana could not possible manage more than a boulder representing a crushed balcony and a chunk of graffiti-stained wall, something about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. This way is another matter, shearing off the precipitously creaking overhang from the collapsed fifth to first stories of the apartment block. The portal swallows the dusty wreckage up and snaps shut, stealing with it a rather substantial bite. Done this way, she might be playing a bizarre game of Architectural Pac-Man. If only it were not so miserable. She wipes her gloved hand against her brow, leaving her bangs glittering with mica and concrete dust, the perspiration causing a few tendrils to cling.

That moment she can spare, shifting her gaze to see who addresses her. Few have the stentorian voice or the fixed command of terse directions, something almost fit to match her own laconic nature. Her English is perfect, exceeding easily ninety-five percent of the country, a gift of Charles Xavier. Its Russian overtones remain, an odd feature in Genosha where the cultural milieu favoured Swahili, West African cadences and Indian melodies, muddled like a good cocktail with a little Arabic or Bantu. "Gods unable to breach the claim, or prevented by their territorial disputes?" she asks, stopping long enough to put her hands on her hips. Better than her thighs. The spell humming away inflicts her with vitality, holding back the searing build-up of lactic acid in her thighs and weary aches everywhere else. They might come, or might never at all. Surely visible to Stephen Strange though, along with the riddled enormity of her aura fractured and kaleidoscopic with the undeniable proofs of her eldritch gifts and the demonic surgery performed by Belasco. A dark balance, always, which might speak to her detachment.

"They make guesses for what they can see. City density here will have higher numbers." In the distance, chopper blades stir up the air. LIDAR and infrared cameras attempt to spot the living among the ruins, such as they are. Drones and a battalion of aid workers, first off the ships from South Africa, the tiny French station on Reunion, and other navies usually operating in the Red Sea are a pittance. She doesn't even acknowledge them. "How bad is the other half of the island? Resembling anything like this, they need to quarantine this place. Cholera is the least of their concerns."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen looks away from Illyana and back out towards the building she was slowly devouring into Limbo - Or he assumed it was Limbo - and releases a soft sigh, "Territorial disputes among the host of the death entities was long settled before this attack; no, the discrepancy lies between the two." Strange stoicly explains as he turns his head, chin down, and then upwards towards the other half of the island.

    "The attack, was as if there wasn't halfs to the island, it was so complete and the scale so immense..." Strange catches himself, again reminded that she may be a dark soul, but Illyana is still a soul none the less and these were in a way, her people. "It is as bad here as it is everywhere else on the island." Strange explains in a slightly more tolerable way.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Limbo is an unmistakeable presence, her mutation piercing that nexus of time and space with almost effortless ease. Those incisions take away plenty of rock, though chances are the exposed concrete wall contains more than a few bodies hidden within. The wires and steel beams stand out, shattered glass lying everywhere. The neighbourhood lacks an upscale feel despite proximity to downtown, likely a victim of being swallowed up by Hammer Bay's relentless expansion under a subtropical sun. However warm and breezy the evening could promise to be, the stench of ruptured sewers and death langs heavy on the air. "How does the dam work?" A clinical precision and a lucid, pointed question work well enough when directed at the Sorcerer Supreme from another -- Limbo's, naturally, at disadvantage here with youth and power alike. But that she commands such power at all is rightly terrifying. At least as it should be.

Her frost-blue eyes shift away from him back to the building, a veritable gravity dragged along with them, leaving not so much as a caress as a sudden absence of being noticed. "The scale of murder. Can we even call it that?" She gestures, almost careless, a sweep of her hand. "When does slaughter become genocide? Why they have done it, I do not know." A slim circling of her thumb to her forefinger pinches out grains of dust and grit, the kind seeping into the clothes, endlessly working its way into hair and mouths and noses, soft and wet places blasted by the discomfort. "What needs to be done?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen's head turns to take in the sounds of the rushing waves crashing on the beach never far off on Genosha, and yet, the sounds of the still crashing super structures and the sirens that have been screaming since the initial attack as rescue workers are worked to the bone, sent to rest and then do the same thing all over. Stephen sighs his disappointement at his own race before turning to Illyana, "The same as any other dam except there is no release river to ease the pressure. Something has captured all the souls of his attack and will likely be doing beyond nefarious things with this incredible resevoir."

    The hypothesis is pondered for a moment and then the Sorcerer Supreme turns to his Limboan counterpart, "There are a few ways to break a dam, and the most effective way is to do it inside the dam itself." Strange notes with a sigh as that too will be dangerous beyond belief. "It will require us to leave the corporeal and enter a sort of pre-afterlife." Stephen notes as he normally can't explain these things to the simpler minds and yet, Illy here should be able to comprehend. "We need to get between the souls and the barrier and find a way to damage it enough that it will break and yet we need to be able to escape the undertoe of the deceased consciousness." Stephen says, a lift of his eyebrow, feeling confident briefly.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Do what the British did in the war, then." Her mouth hardens a little, but the Russian soul ever breathes with the hardship and gallows humour of the black earth in that winter-bound land. They can smile into the face of death and make merry while their toes darken from frostbite, altogether prepared to scorch their own soil for a pyrrhic defeat. Napoleon knew it, Hitler learned it, she embodies the same defiant spirit in a golden bubble. Her chin lifts a fraction. They share the same race, separated by years and continents, superpowers in a Cold War ended before her birth but resonating violently down history all the same. "Bunker busters. Bomb the reservoir as it were Maybe it needs to be more pinpoint, so there are none drowned, nyet?"

She doesn't seem put out by his suggestion, at any rate, almost immediately grasping the basics. Her throat works to swallow, the grit banished away. A glass of water is a luxury here, where pipes are severed and whole neighbourhoods jarred this way or that by an upheaval certain to have provoked a tsunami somewhere. Has anyone even looked? "I have died before," she says without preamble. "What danger or protection that gives, maybe worth knowing. But they suffer. I did not. Hardly worth our names to let the souls there wait for their rest, having already been tormented in their mortal form?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Indeed." Stephen says curtly and without a second thought to spare, no second glance to the functionless horizon of devistation, Stephen offers his hand to Illyana, as he aims to step through the barriers between worlds, his ally at his side shouldn't have to expend her energies on such a trivial task if he could do it for her while he was at the same time.

    They stop on the other side of the world, able to look back to the ruined island and yet there is an uncomfortable haze upon the world, while before is a dome, and less a dam. Black and blue whisps press against it and the barrier back to the earth they came from, a sickly well of the trapped and tormented. Should they come together or not.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Few would be entirely willing to lock their fingers with the Russian sorceress. Her body goes still and tense for a moment, absorbing all the weighted horror surrounding them for a moment. An old maxim applies, whether army or university or labouring mother: keep moving, and don't let it catch up to you. It, the enormity, the presence, the pressure. A friend of hers grapples with the rediscovery of life after death. Countless families on three continents grieve the sudden loss of their loved ones, friends severed forever from others.

Where his hand is extended, she takes Stephen's, pressing her cloth-covered palm to his. The tips of her fingers are bare, as they must be, the gloves a byproduct of physically pulling bodies from the wreckage or brushing aside the flotsam and jetsam of extinguished lives. Smooth they are not, callused instead, the use of that brilliant, terrible weapon carved from her soul assuring that. But steady; if his are scarred, then it's a common sign of honest, truthful work.

Stepping sideways as far as he is concerned is much kinder than her method. Illyana's armour starts to shift almost immediately, giving no thought to barbing and sweeping down her left shoulder as far as her wrist in a pauldron and vambrace assembled from molten shadows, liquid midnight locked in metal form. Beautiful, truly; that armour's an extension of will, in a way. She doesn't have a scintillating ruby cloak. One must make do to look the part. And it cannot help at all with the sight of that wretched dome, its presence alone deserving a tilt of her head, as though taking in what it might be with vague wonder. "Who would do this?" And how fast can they /die?/

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I'm sure we'll find out." They wont find out. Stephen steps towards the barrier encasing all the souls and this time he reaches out to Illyana and will pull her into the well, a breath taken before hand.

    The wizard pulls Illyana into the seemingly limitless well of souls surrounds the two as they dive deeper and deeper into the cell of souls. Stephen points forward with his free hand, the cloak propelling him and Illyana deeper and deeper into the blackness of unlife and it's starting to cling onto and drag them down, fighting to take their place on the real world as they want what they can't have.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
They might not, but then is it necessary now? Time is an enemy for all things mortal, yet mortality means exceedingly little with the Vishanti's blessing or, for that matter, rulership of a dominion that knows neither the passage of age or linear temporal structures. She is armed in a heartbeat, that slender beacon of light dancing from her fingers and transforming itself into a glimmering bar of intense radiance. The blackness encroaching on them hits the wall of a vibrant, living soul painfully torn from the essence of her virtue and goodness -- if somewhat measured in wrath. Two avenging angels, then, crash down from the empyrean realms to the corrupted firmament.

And if nothing else, that blade knows its own kind so terribly well. It resonates to a key of eldritch refrain, the symphonic swell at the cusp of mystic senses always undulating, moving through the crescendos and storming celestial chorus that surrounds them. Illyana's expression is cold, almost formless, but she brings the essence of the Ode to Joy or one of Tchaikovsky's great, spirited anthems into the heart of the void. Not nearly so impressive as the Cloak (TM) but warranting its own moment.

Her fingers never leave his, clamped around his wrist, secure in that infinity bond of intricate purpose. Though the souls press closer, let them turn their eyes away from him who guides. The Doctor can hell. The Demon Queen, on the other hand, withstands the penetrating glare.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Break the ceiling!" Stephen calls out and with a great whip of his arm, and a swift motion of the cloak from his shoulders. Shrouding around Illyana for a brief moment before resting on her shoulders and helping the Doctor with his effort, the two throw Illyana towards the inner wall of the dam, hoping against hope that the witch will be able to break the barrier down and allow the souls to go onto the after life.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
He need ask but the once. Stephen doesn't have to deal with someone particularly used to lollygagging around, or failing to note an instruction or command when pursued by a fraction of the weighty dead enshrouded in their prison. It certainly helps that Illyana is a talented combatant in typical situations, but when deprived of the general laws of physics, everything changes. No, she hasn't bat wings or her own celestial plumes turned to shadow at her spine. The cloak will certainly do well to elevate her, and the might of the Vishanti flung through the Doctor into the waif. She doesn't /look/ like much, an especially athletic university student knowing the deprivations of post-Soviet Russia.

All that changes with the sword. No mazurka, this, but a deadly hanging arc that sends her hurtling for the spell. The Soulsword can take shape to a whim, and the rather broad blade that she might normally turn against such a broad hemisphere of power shifts in motion to something slender, longer and without the limitations of foil, epee, or rapier against a broad side of a metaphysical barn. He's the hammer; to wit, the scalpel is a torrential ray of light shining golden-blue, a sabre arcing with slight, sinuous grace. It hums in its ferocity, and she tucks her knees higher to meet with that collision.

And hopefully not be the equivalent of a junebug on a windshield or a hornet meeting the hood of a speeding F-150 in the summertime, really.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen enchants the very motion of his throw of the younger woman and pushes her forwards towards the dam through the well of trapped souls and he watches as the mutant girl sails through the depths of the dead until his vision slowly begins to fade to black.

    There is almost no sound beyond your own muffled heart beats and the person next to you is barely audible through a sort of muddy sort of non-air non-water likeness that is the representations of the recently dead on their way to some after life. Stephen's form goes limp as Illyana stabs into the barrier with all speed and might given to the tip of her impossible sword piercing the spell and for a moment, nothing seems to happen. A flicker of hopelessness washes across the well and those within, living or not.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Break the ceiling. The war cry rings in her ears, radiating danger and a dark thrill. Adrenaline ricochets through Illyana's system, shunting away the Arctic ice for a brief thaw. Respite to the savage heat fuels her pinpoint strike, that plummeting fall of her astral form through a place between spaces. She doesn't need to scream as the great glittering hemisphere looms in her vision, the Soulsword rammed with that double-handed overhead strike down into the very core of resistance holding out against her. Her pulse thrums in veins imagined more than actual, light burning too bright with the bewitched cyanotic flash-fire erupting from a blade of pure soul energy.

<<Open.>> The command gilds her lips, seizing every breath blasted by the charnel smoke of impact. <<OPEN!>>

She sinks against the strange barrier, going to her knees, wrenching the sword sideways to plow it in deeper to the spell. Formless chords of her voice call to those underneath, reaching forth. Is it viscous and malleable, this barrier, or hard as glass? Here, it might be both at once. Blonde hair floats around her face as she saws the Soulsword back and forth slightly, testing for a weak point, giving fuel for its terrifying accuracy against enchantments and illusions. Trust in it, trust in herself, they flow both ways.

<<I have walked the path of death and crossed the veil,>> she tells them, encouraging them. <<You will make the journey home, too.>> Her Russian words flow with intent bled from the girl who entered Limbo, the woman who left it. The Witch Queen can't exactly question what's going on with the Sorcerer Supreme, yet, lamenting and rousing the dead for the moment. If they're in full riot, it might be a good distraction. Or shake up the death-shroud. Only one way to know.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    The soulsword enters via the initial blow but seems almost stuck within the pinpoint hole created in the spell by the Limbonic Sorceress Supreme and yet the sawing motion seems to get some hope back into the area as the smallest gap is instantly filled with the nearest soul shoving itself and Illy closer to the blade in order to get out of the damn.

    That's when Illyana will feel it at her shoulders, the cloak is moving to form a sort of jacket around Illyana, wrapping it's red length about her two arms and then pulling. It's trying to get her to pull the blade back out of the stab wound.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
When dealing with animated cloaks capable of pulling a Cleopatra-meets-Caesar moment, even the most reckless of magic users has to consider. Illyana isn't the calibre of mad that, say, a certain Asgardian with a horned crown is. She falls back into the tug of the welcome weight, satin and wool and other things besides settling lightly. Wrenching herself away from the dome is difficult enough, the call to keep stabbing it -- to destroy and devour the spell -- so strong. Fighting the undertow commands a shred of concentration too much, recognized for the corrupting element it is. With an act of supreme willpower, she drags off the Soulsword, hauling it back towards her. Whether the Cloak of Levitation can whisk her away or sees fit to let her drop like a caterpillar stuck in its cocoon -- or a red purrito, either's an option. Catlike expression on the sorceress and the burrito of Cloaky excellence is one for the ages, NOT to be seen by others, but still.

Buts. So many possibilities.

Sometimes you have to trust in luck.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    With the soulsword out of the pinhole, and air certainly being diminished greatly at this point, the souls swell into the pin hole and like any great dam that gets a hole in it, the hole only grows. With a small crack there and then it snaps and extends beyond the line of sight in several directions and like a great fish bowl being shattered, the dam breaks.

    Souls go washing out into the afterlife and a great sigh can be felt from the trapped and even from the earth side of the dimensional barriers. The cloak around Illy's arms wraps around her belly as well to make sure the woman doesn't get washed away by the incredibly current of the damned seeking their final resting sites.

    As the tides begin to abate a singular body seems to be floating past, being washed away by the current of souls and the cloak around Illyana's arm reaches out for the body but doesn't do more than that as it lacks the fingers to grip.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
A piece falls, another to follow. The view would be spectacular to behold from afar, supposing she were not already imperiled by the proximity of the escaping ephemeral souls in search of their final reward. Make of that how one will, she beholds the transformation of an inert facet to something shattered by a thousand lines of violence and woe. Sprinkled fissures lend a glorious cracked marble effect, even as she tumbles against the current.

Death she has already faced in her time. The siren song isn't strong enough here to hold her down, not with the combined efforts of the cloak and leaning in hard as she can. The sword has nothing to be planted in, yet she invests herself in it, bowing forward into the surging rush of fellow beings yet to be claimed as victims and holy martyrs to the cause of Genosha.

It hurts. Hurting means to be alive. Life seethes like a beacon against her closed eyes, and she flings out her hand to snarl something blue and wrought of origami folds and pleated edges, typical angles where her element is lustrous and everchanging shadows. The limp figure isn't given time to run.

"I wonder who will kill me first," she says -- to the Cloak, the Soulsword, no one at all. "Oshtur or my brother, da?" Piotr no doubt would be aghast, but she hasn't the time as she seizes Stephen and round and round they go for the moment.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen's limp body isn't much help against the current of souls, in fact, it's likely the one thing Illyana would not want to have to deal with, dragging her down into the depths of the creek styx that will soon be feeding into the river.

    The cloak does help out quite a bit as it unravels quite a bit and while still around Illyana's arm that has a hold of Strange, the cloak then wraps around the sorcerer as well and starts to lift both up and against the current, trying to beat the tide of souls.

    The membrane between the world and the dead is coming more and more into view as the souls wash away from it and Illyana fights the current to reach the realm she belongs in, and the spring of hope bubbles once again. There is a chance of surviving.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Ah, but the Styx and all her tributaries holds a twofold benefit for the Hell Lord clutching the good doctor tighter to her body. One, the Olympian gods swore by that black river of hate separating the realms of the living from the underworld populated by the Hadean dead. A promise wrested there holds great potential. Two, Charon waits in that boat to punt them across and she, for one, refuses to bring the two gold obols necessary to pay the boatman. She's more like to smack him with his own oar and shout about a legion invading.

What happens when the souls of the dead carry /them/ off? Questions not worth answering. Moments wasted contemplating human existence come at too dear a cost, and she grits her teeth together at the weight pushing the pair of them back.

"<<I should be sorry,>>" she says apropos of nothing. "<<But you will be my guest.>>"

Control shifts; it might perilously rush them through that membrane too fast, /far/ too fast as she ceases fighting against the current so hard, but all for a reason. It might work here. It might not: she has no idea but to try, reaching for the ephemeral resources that bind her to the conjunction of all places and times. From the battered core, a line ripped open into a wide circle to swallow them whole. If it comes -- the portal flowering at the speed of thought in the mundane world, but here? Perhaps not? -- then so be it. That hopefully will plow them both straight through into Limbo. No time to think of the other destination on the other side. Hey, maybe a few dead souls get to come along for the ride. Sorry, Hades.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Illyana's gamble is one heck of a risk as the souls continue to pull against the Sorceress and the millions of dead rush through the damaged and now fully collapsed spell with the floatsam of two powerful sorcerers fighting to not be lost in the highways of death. The portal the young mutant seeks to open does exactly that as it has countless times for her and the unconscious Strange. As well as about five of the poor Genoshian souls fall into Limbo with Illyana and Stephen, suddenly safe from the torrent of horrors.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Millions. Sixteen million. What happens if even ten seconds of them pour through the human-sized portal ripped into the heart of Limbo? Are countless multitudes about to become her subjects or do they still venture on to their eternal reward? It's not as though she has a Valkyrie to ask the questions of. Dani isn't here. Neither is Brunnhilde or Jane.

Illyana will cross that bridge when she gets to it. Always the wise way to approach life, one sorrowful bite at a time. Russian pragmatism wedded to learning magic the hardest way may help.

Either way, the portal tears open. He's lucky to escape the harrowing swandive, though a man sent catapulting through the astral plane at the fingertip of the Ancient One may be more familiar with most. Dimensional axes skew. Strange and Illyana go tearing in all directions, catapulted up and soaring sidelong, ascending downward with all the matter-devouring force of a supermassive black hole consuming the ancient stars in the center of a galaxy. The revolutionary spin departs and collides, accelerating to a standstill.

Roses don't grow in Limbo. Not naturally anyway. But these ones are made of fire and they make a glorious rubicund facade bobbing on slender black stems tipped in green, curling leaves. Soot feeds through the thorns. A ring of them wrap around a strange device, a simple and plain nymphaeum of striated marble set in the center. Capped by a dome, the thirteen columns ring an open space where they land. An elaborate pentagram seethes underneath them for a moment, hallowed and squared to the upper elements, fading out. Illyana promptly goes to her knees, Strange's deadweight laid out.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen's form rests prone on the insane ground of Limbo and the doctor's eyelids begin to slowly flutter and the wizard's grey eyes slowly open once he coughs up a bit of the soulworld's remains onto the ground with a horrible whooping cough sound from his lungs.

    Stephen tries to push himself up and onto his palms to see where he's at but even looking upwards at the blonde woman above him and the near hell-like landscape above and around him, the former surgeon squints his eyes in Illyana's direction as he seems to calmly ask, "Where abouts are we?" Obvious this isn't the dimension between earth and the dividing afterlifes. "Should I assume you succeeded in saving everything or is the afterworlds doomed?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Limbo has no stars. It's a strange and sad fact, but the only lights in the dome of the heavens are those which its sorcerer supreme grants. Distant watchfires might be well and truly fires in the sky, nothing akin to the huge, luminous balls of gas swirling through interstellar voids. Limbo has light, though, the disk of an opaque white moon hung high by the whim of its mistress or some other force. It could well be a prison tracking around the heavens for some unknown beast.

Skies exist, the swirl of atmosphere, at least in this corner. Limbo's rules, of course, behave how they will with relative nods to physical laws and then mocking everything else with a sly smile and a pair of fingers crossed behind their back. The ruler of the place coughs out a gob of ectoplasm after several false starts, trying not to gag further on the riverine debris inhaled and now so utterly unwelcome in her system. Not the loveliest sight but one fixed by wiping her wrist against her mouth and her glove again to her eyes, the weeping tears streaming away into ephemeral mist. It's not a pleasant experience entirely.

She can worry about the dead afterward, still choking out the goop with one last heave. They both suffer, only mortal. The spirits might be drawn to it, but she makes a gesture and somehow a white cloth is just... there. It flutters right towards Stephen, clean as one can possibly have. Sterile, even, given how it came into being.

<<The shades' realm tastes awful. Always.>> Russian, first, though perhaps he can understand it without her involvement. English takes a moment of grasping about until she finds the handholds of syllables, the memories of sentence structure. "Afterlifes belong more to the death gods. I make no claims to their demesnes." Oh, there are absolutely demons here, but only a few daring to peek through the roses, awaiting their mistress' biding. Spying. Measuring up dinner. "More trouble than it is worth. Here, you have respite. For a given measure of safety." That smile is shadowed; she knows the lies. "A guest of Limbo."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen's eyebrows go up as he rolls over his shoulder to look away from Illyana and a hunch of his shoulders and the lurching sound of his own stomach turning inside out as he retches up the ecto remains of some poor Genoshian all over the ground of Limbo and he does it a couple of times before he to wipes at his mouth and then reaches over to take the magically summoned hanky from Illyana. "I appreciate it." The wizard says, looking to the cloth and then back to the witch with a frown as he dabs the bile away from his goatee. A look to the white hanky and then back to Illyana, "I will hold onto this then." Stephen says, knowing some russian but thankful to the quick translation spell and he lifts his other eyebrow.

    "So this is Limbo." Stephen remarks and nods a few times as he pushes himself up to a more seated position with his legs out before him and the blonde woman to his right. "Thank you for saving me." Stephen takes a moment to truly mean the words as he looks to Illyana's brilliant blue eyes.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The goo isn't bound to last for long. How could it? Never mind the peculiar temporal timestream governing Limbo, but the gelatinous compound is bound to evaporate away into nothing at the first opportunity. Illyana needn't even worry about the stains on her black leather gloves, for those slick trails wash away on their own. No helping the bitter taste it leaves behind in the mouth, but concerns about a cough drop or a Tic-Tac are far past the current set of circumstance and coordinates. "Of course," she replies out of wooden habit. The masks are falling back into place, her loose fringe of blonde hair covering features rendered icy cool anew. The Soulsword remains at her side, discarded for the nonce and perfectly dangerous in its inert state just outside arm's reach. "Da, Limbo." The flaming roses continue to singe and crackle, petals formed of nothing but hellfire and something a touch more pure to the elemental heart. Somewhere in there, a small salamander gambols around and rolls about in the embers. "I thought it safer to transition here. Easier to stabilise you in an emergency."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "That makes sense." Stephen says as he looks to the roses and the creatures that reside within Limbo and he gives a long look at Illyana and cants his head. "Smart thinking." The wizard notes again as he tries to push himself to his feet and he stumbles and reaches out to grab onto Illyana's shoulder to keep himself from falling over. "It might be a while before I feel well enough to move." Stephen says with a frown towards Illyana.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Sensibility, it goes along with sense, pride, and the other host of virtues and vices named by a spinster Englishwoman in the Regency period. A fine writer, but dubious all the same. "Saving you," Illyana replies with that faulted state of formality and restraint where none belongs, "is too high a sentiment. You were not in grave peril." Oh, that has to be a pun intended. Surely. Save that perhaps it doesn't. She forces herself to her knees, tucking one beneath her, and then pushing herself to rise. Steady or not, she refuses to bind herself to a weakness like that.

When Stephen does the same and wobbles into her, he might find her considerably more solid than her previous incarnation in the world of ephemera was. No shade there, no astral projection but embodied totally enough. Further is she familiar with altering her stance quickly to avoid the pair of them tumbling over immediately. Gripping his arm, she shakes her head. "Sit. It can be disorienting. I can bring you safe food, if you need it. Or water."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen steadys himself rather quickly and shakes his head to clear it of the pulsing stars and the looming blackness that threatens to wash over his vision from the pounding pain. Though the pun heard, doesn't illicit much more than a sidelong glance from Strange as he widdens his feet to make sure he's safe and no longer about to fall and as he does this, the cloak slowly moves from Illyana's shoulders finally to rest upon Stephen's, the extra pool of magic feeding into Stephens quickly as he lingers a moment against the firmly real Russian with a shake of his head. "No, I'm not disoriented... not by this." He says with a wave of his hand towards Limbo but then continues, "Food, no I'm fine, I do think we need to hurry back to Earth though, I fear there is more that needs to be done there..." Though he's in no state to really do much at this time.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"About five minutes have passed since we left," says the petite blonde without so much as a blink to decipher how she knows this with such acuity. Her hand clasps her arm above the elbow, measured in slow, careful motions. Everything calls for containment and care, a certain instinctive caution rooted in the black Rodina of her homeland, that shadowy soil that stretches from the White Sea to the Pacific. "Rarely do we say no rush, and mean it. Here that is a truism. Until it isn't." The hint of a gesture lies in the margins, the roll of her shoulder and the dip of her chin, the flicker of those frosty lashes and dark pupils dilating to devour the frozen blue wastelands of her irises.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Are you implying I might not be aware of the passage of time and how malleable it is betwixt dimensions?" Stephen asks, the words might sound harsh but the manner too itself might bite the ear a bit, but his intention is to begin a conversation that will lead to the two mages back to Earth to help those of Genosha. Stephen sighs to himself and slowly lowers himself back to the alien ground with a deep breath. He does need a rest wether or not he admits it to himself. "What about yourself? Are you alright?" Stephen asks, ever the one to care for others.