That night, as golden leaves clattered against the window panes, Rogue showed Bryony exactly where the table seance had happened in the empty room. They pulled the little table back into the room and Bryony began building an altar in the exact same spot. The witch had worn a burgundy velvet shawl against the October chill, but now draped it across one chair back as she started prepping the ritual altar. Rogue sat on one of the chairs they had returned to the room and watched in fascination as the witch went to work to dispel the spirits of the unwelcomed dead.
The tabletop disappeared beneath a black cloth with a white pentacle stitched in the center. White candles were embedded in silver candlesticks, matches close by a little jar candle inside a glass sleeve. The assorted bottles of charged oils were lined up, a censer and charcoal were close by, with a small bottle of powdered incense and a little tin container with its mysterious contents. Reaching for the little tin, Rogue tried to read the writing on the label, but caught a whiff of a truly nasty smell. She started sniffing at the little tin as Bryony warned, “Don’t sniff too close, or it’ll turn your stomach. It’s asafetida.”
Wrinkling her nose, Rogue asked, “Assa-who? What’s that?”
“As-a-fe-ti-da. It’s an intense spice that’s sometimes used sparingly in Indian cooking, but it’s also got a lengthy and potent history of use in banishing magic. It smells awful, to the point of making some people toss their cookies if it gets too strong. I hope we don’t need it.”
“Ugh...” Rogue muttered and daintily put the little tin back in place. “Tell me how I can help.”
“You remember how I taught you to dress a candle this afternoon?” Rogue nodded. “Start with these,” and the witch handed Rogue the candles for the actual banishing: black ones with symbols carved into the sides. “Use the Banishing Oil on the black candles, and the Protection Oil on the red ones, and really crank the energy into them. Then light the little jar candle so we have fire ready all the time.”
As Rogue rubbed the strongly-scented oil into the candles, she spoke another uncomfortable question in a soft voice, “Are we gonna be in any danger during this banishing ritual thing?”
Bryony stopped her preparations and looked the younger woman straight in the eyes. “I don’t know. Since the spirits are already manifesting physically and have tried to attack people, then it’s a possibility. The trick is to have your space prepared and your mind prepared, and meet them head on, a battle of wills.” Bryony gave Rogue a sweet smile, and added, “ I may look like a mild-mannered farm girl, but when it comes to ritual banishing, I’m a ball-buster.”
Rogue laughed aloud at that, and Bryony added, “We’ll still have Logan here, just in case. I don’t think he’s thrilled with the idea of actually inviting the ghosts here so we can give them the boot, but it’s the best bet for success. He’s got a protective streak a mile wide, so he’ll do fine, as long as we don’t have to resort to the asafetida.”
“You know about his heightened senses?” Rogue inquired.
“Yep, he told me about the mutation. It... suits him, somehow, the feral qualities about him. I like that.” Heavy footsteps sounded up the hall, and Rogue almost froze, thinking back to the night of the seance and the soldier’s footsteps in the same hall, but Logan’s voice made her relax.
“So, how’s the witchcraft lesson coming along? You learnin’ anything, kid?” Rogue gritted her teeth at the nickname he’d hung on her again.
“Well, I’m a long way from Graduation Day at Hogwarts, but I’m getting the basics down.”
Logan settled himself on the chair beside Rogue and hung one arm over her shoulders casually. Rogue tried not to glow with some kind of smug triumph. Jealousy is an evil master and she smashed the feelings down again.
“So, is this gonna work?” Logan waved a hand directly at the altar, careful to keep any judgmental comments to himself.
Bryony stared at the arrangement of tools and answered, “Based on what I know of the haunting, it has a good chance of working. If it doesn’t, for whatever reason, we’ll just have to step it up a notch.”
“What is the next notch?” asked Rogue, her curiosity spilling over.
“Professional ‘ghost busters’, if you will - what we call hunters.”
Bryony observed both Rogue and Logan raise their eyebrows in a twin expression for a moment, but otherwise keeping straight faces.
Xavier had chosen to keep the location and timing of the banishing ritual a secret from the student body as a whole, even those who had participated, except for Rogue. He had also arranged to keep the younger children away on a field trip to a local museum during ‘private visitation’ hours. The bus rolled out the driveway taking the laughing youngsters to their off-hours destination, away from the threat of ghostly upheaval in their home, and the more direct threat of dealing with mutant-hating people during regular hours at the museum. The older teens were having a movie-and-pizza night in the rec room farthest from the ritual site.
Within fifteen minutes, the candles on the altar were glowing and two thin streams of herbal smoke curled up from the censer. Logan kept his distance from that, choosing to stand by the door at the ready. Rogue was rolling the banishing candles between her palms again, layering a last charge of oil and energy into the black wax tapers, intended to give their unwelcomed entities the old heave-ho.
Logan had watched and listened in alert silence as the witch had circled the area three times with a dagger in hand, chanting a kind of poem about surrounding the area with a some kind of circle of power. On her third sweep around the room he thought he almost felt the wave of tingling energy pass over his skin. He scratched one ear and thought to himself that either he was imagining it or maybe she really did know what she was doing.
More candles were lighted on the altar -- little colored candles -- as Bryony called the elemental quarters to attend. That was something he knew a little about. He had spent time with a shaman woman a few years ago and had read from her books about the four winds being aligned with the four elements of life: air, fire, water, and earth. It made sense. He’d also read into the Chinese concept of a fifth element of metal, but on contemplating the existence of the adamantium on his own bones, and the presence of the claws, he decided there was nothing natural about that, and dismissed the theory of a fifth element.
Water and salt were spattered around the room, a then a white candle and the censer were carried around and Logan’s attention focused elsewhere, her spoken words an unheeded mantra in his subconscious as he monitored the sounds outside the room, tensing again for any intrusion on any level. The witch was calling names now that he did not recognize, a smattering of words in another language, possibly Greek or Gaelic or Hindi - he wasn’t sure. He heard nothing outside the room. Her chanting changed pace again, and he refocused with a surprise to see her pouring something into a small iron pot, then Rogue pricked her finger and squeezed a drop of blood into the pot, too. Opening his mouth to protest, he stifled himself as Bryony followed suit, then watched in fascination as Rogue started rolling the black candles between her blood-tinged palms again. The scents of wax and herbs and oils and blood and salt and the two women were becoming almost hypnotic to his heightened senses, lulling him into a place he had rarely been, a place that felt between reality and whatever lay beyond, like twilight sleep. Then Logan shook himself slightly to again focus on his duties as guardian of the two women. The witch was speaking in a commanding voice now, and it roused his attention even more.
“You came for blood. Here is blood! You came to take hostages. Here is one you pursued! You came on your commander’s orders to invade this home. Now I command you to come to this center, this heart of the home, this place of power! Come here now!”
Rogue seemed almost too intent on the black tapers rolling between her palms, the heat from her working hands starting to soften the wax. The carved tapers bent slightly as the incised runes began re-blending with surface. She stabbed each black candle into it’s holder and waited. Logan noted how calm and yet intense Rogue’s demeanor seemed. Either she was naturally as solid as a rock under these bizarre conditions, or Bryony had done her job well and given the young mutant woman a thorough introduction to the working of magic in a very short time.
Logan guessed both theories were correct.
“Come! Come here and finish what you started. You are soldiers. You have your orders. You have a mission. Finish it!” Logan silently prayed they wouldn’t appear or obey the witch. It was getting unnerving, and a general pain in the ass. With a soft movement of air over his skin, he felt coldness enter the room from nowhere in particular. Gooseflesh stood out on his forearms and his feral senses kicked into high gear, bristling and inhaling sharply. As he exhaled through slightly bared teeth, steam appeared before him. His eyes narrowed into gold and the claws slithered down, gleaming in the candlelight.
They were coming.
Bryony grabbed a piece of parchment paper she had prepared earlier, and held it nearby a candle flame, ready to ignite. “Appear here before me, NOW!” she commanded, and one finger pointed at the floor in front of her. Before Rogue could gasp a breath, a camouflage-garbed man stood staring down at the witch. Logan tensed to leap forward, but held himself in check when Rogue held a hand toward him, indicating he should wait.
“Call your comrades. Gather your men - you have scattered. Call them all here, now,” Bryony spoke the words in calm, demanding meter, intending to overpower the specter by willpower alone. The paper in her fingers turned a golden hue at the corner nearest the flame. It was starting to char. “Bring them now!” she shouted, and more ghostly men appeared in the room, more than Rogue had anticipated. There were shadowy figures all around them, all focused on the witch.
Then hell broke loose as one manifested solidly enough to grab Rogue by the hair and drag her to the floor. Logan threw himself forward and slashed the claws through the soldier’s head. He felt a slight resistance, like walking through thick mud, but no blood or brains came forth. The soldier was partly flesh, partly energy, not in this world or the next entirely. Shadows threaded around him as he whirled to see what had happened to the contest of wills between the ghost and the witch.
“You are banished!” Bryony was yelling as the paper fired, the flames licking closer to her fingertips as she waved the smoke toward the soldier in front of her. “You and your men are finished. You are defeated! You are dead! DEAD! You no longer belong here, in this house, in this realm. Move on, let go, depart from this life and MOVE ON!” She threw the flaming remnant into the iron pot and the contents ignited with a burst, tongues of flame licking above the tabletop.
The shade who had grabbed Rogue faded, as did most of the shadow soldiers, save for three who had become solid flesh. The one standing before Bryony seemed to be the most solid and grounded in this earthly realm, and he reached for the witch, grabbing her throat and throwing her against a wall, where she fell to the floor. The second soldier turned to Logan and brought a long knife toward him in a back-handed slash that took Logan through the ribs, bringing blood as the claws once again went through semi-solid flesh. Soldier number two and the one who had grabbed Rogue had both faded instantly on contact with Logan’s claws, leaving only the one standing by the altar.
With both fists clenched and the fingers laced, the remaining soldier brought his too-solid fists down into the center of the altar and smashed the table to the floor, scattering everything in chaos: candles went out, glass broke, hot liquid splashed as the flames died down in the unnaturally cold air.
With a roar of rage, Logan buried both sets of claws into the soldier’s chest, and was shocked to see the man stand solidly. With six adamantium claws buried through his vital organs, the soldier stared Logan straight in the eyes, eyes that Logan finally recognized. He’d repeated this scene once before, in the kitchen on the night of Stryker’s raid. This soldier was the one who had opened machine gun fire on Bobby Drake, before Logan had nailed him to the refrigerator door with the claws.
“It won’t work again,” the words were part air, part ice, and Logan almost recoiled at the breath of the grave that flowed toward him. “You can’t kill a dead man, not again.” Logan felt the cold seep into his body where the soldier’s hands grasped him. His bones started to hurt, the metal inside him chilling. He tried to drag the claws down through the dead man’s torso, but the effort was too much. Both men sank to their knees, still locked together on the claws, hands grasping for any means to hurt the other.
Only the little pot candle remained burning, and crawling toward one of the black rune-carved candles, Rogue ignited it and held the flame to the soldier’s pant leg, igniting his trousers. Eerie blue fire seemed to envelope the ghost in moments. Instantly his head snapped around and she saw his eyes grow wide. Logan withdrew the claws and threw himself away from the fiery ghost, who began to writhe and fade in the flickering light.
The room sank into darkness. As all eyes adjusted to the thin moonlight entering the windows, Logan edged to Rogue’s side. “You okay, kid?” Rogue had never heard that kind of uncertainty in Logan’s voice. She knew he was thoroughly unnerved.
“I’m okay, just a little shaken up. I’ll get some lights on. See about Bryony. She may be hurt.” Rogue rose from the floor on shaky legs to avoid any broken glass, and stepped carefully to the light switch on the wall. Logan was already working his way toward the opposite wall where Bryony had crumpled after being thrown by the departed soldier.
As the lights came on, Logan was already searching the witch’s eyes for a response. “Are you hurt?”
“Umh.... I don’t think so...” she mumbled, fingers rubbing her throat where a ring of bruises were starting to show. “I think maybe my arm is...” she brushed her hand down around her elbow and came up with bloody fingers. Logan started to help her rise and then checked himself. There was a large shard of broken glass protruding from her arm.
“Rogue, make sure all the fire is out. Get help and lock this room off until we can come back here and clean up. I’m taking her to Med Lab. Do not stay here alone.” Scooping the woman into his arms, he marched quickly out the door and toward the elevators. As the elevator whisked them to the lower levels, he gazed directly into her brown eyes.
“How you doing?” He gave her a reassuring smile.
“Well, I know one thing for sure now,” she answered before grimacing as pain apparently raced through her.
“What?” Logan pressed her for an answer, wanting to keep her distracted from the pain.
“I’m in over my head. They’re strong. We need hunters.”
“Agreed. HANK! Get in here now!” Logan shouted as he placed the woman gently on a table. Hank wandered into the room, gasped, and leaped into action.
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