Chapter 89: Chapter 81 - Baldur and the X-men Part 7
POV: Baldur.
After Stopping the Battle.
Savage Land.
The men riding Pteranodons were the only ones I couldn't incinerate. They moved too much in the air for me to focus my attention on them. Of course, after seeing what I did to their allies, they retreated back to the island, leaving only our new allies on this shore.
The trick I used to kill all the enemy soldiers is something I've done before—sharing my power with them without giving away my resistance to them. Of course, to do this, my targets have to stay still as much as possible for me to focus on them. That's why I got everyone's attention before.
"What happened..."
Everyone present was looking at me without saying a word. It was Storm who broke the silence, she's still in shock from witnessing the deaths of hundreds of people happening in just one second.
"I killed them, of course. Don't worry too much about it, they died without feeling anything."
"But... killing so many people like that, without even showing any emotion..."
"Don't be naive, Ororo. This isn't a superhero game. It's war."
"But with your power, you could have stopped them without taking any lives."
(This philosophical conversation about killing or not is making me angry. Whatever. If Xavier didn't teach her this, I'll be her teacher.)
"Stopping the fight without having to kill any of them? Yes, it was possible. But for that, I would have had to find a non-lethal way to take most of them out of combat until they surrendered to me or retreated. During that time, they would continue killing our new allies. My way, I ended the battle without any further allied casualties."
"I understand that, but that's not the X-Men way."
(She still doesn't understand.)
"Yes. The X-Men way taught by Xavier aims to turn you into heroes of the people, to change the mindset of those who have doubts about mutants. A noble goal, but I am not a hero to anyone but my people, and if I need to sacrifice my soul or my principles to protect them, I will. Because that's what true heroes do: they sacrifice."
Of course, she didn't accept my way of thinking. I don't care if she accepts it, my way of thinking is my own, and it doesn't matter to her.
"Enough of this conversation. They were enemy soldiers and died as soldiers, your lamentation is only dishonoring them."
Later, we met again with the group of X-Men who stayed behind. We moved to the shore where the allied army was setting up camp. Storm briefed everyone on what happened, and of course, each had a different reaction, except for Logan, who didn't care about what I did.
"That was an act contrary to what I teach my students, Mr. Baldur."
"Spare me the sermon, Xavier. Or should I tell your students about the lives you took in the Korean War?"
"That was war."
"Exactly. Enough of this now, we need to let our new friend speak about what in the gods' names is happening in this land."
Ka-Zar, along with his saber-toothed tiger, stood in front of his army, looking at me carefully. He knew I wasn't an enemy, but that didn't stop him from feeling afraid. However, I managed to reassure him when Storm went to get her friends. We agreed to hear his story and postpone the attack on the island for a while.
"Can you tell us who is the master of that island, Mr. Ka-Zar?"
"We don't know who rules that cursed place. He just appeared here from one day to the next. At first, he showed no signs of attacking us, so we didn't care about him. But a few moons ago, he started kidnapping people from several villages. The master of that place somehow managed to subdue a rival people to ours as his subordinates and armed them, forming an army of his own. One of those kidnapped people was my wife, so I gathered all the nearby tribes and formed this army to get our people back."
(The master of that place is probably using the captured people for research material or slave labor. The same can be said of the two kidnapped X-Men. Anyway, now that his army has been destroyed, we just have to break through the defenses of that place.)
"Two of ours were also taken by them. Don't worry, we will do what we can to help your people stay safe too," Xavier said, doing something he shouldn't do in situations like this—giving hope. Imagine having your wife kidnapped and then a cop shows up and tells you with total certainty that she will be fine, then shortly afterward, you find out something even crueler has happened.
"It'll be alright buddy, We'll help you find your wife," Rogue says, her accent showing.
"If we're going, we have to go now, the enemy already knows we're alive after the crash, as one of us destroyed his entire army."
Logan glares at me with anger. Not because I killed all those people, but because we lost the element of surprise.
"I mean, who would believe that a missile would be enough to wipe out people like us?" I retort.
"So, are we just going to walk into the enemy fortress?" storm asked.
"Why not? They already know we're here anyway."
With my words, everything was decided.
"I'd like to accompany you. I don't know what's going on inside that place, but I have knowledge of the land it's on."
"Senhor Ka-Zar, that will be very dangerous. Are you sure?" Xavier asked.
"I would follow you anyway. I won't just stand here waiting while you fight to save my wife."
"Very well, I have no right to stop you. Mr. Baldur, do you agree?"
Ka-zar has a body stronger than an ordinary human, and his knowledge of the forest isn't very useful to me. But I know he spoke the truth, he'll follow us anyway, so my permission doesn't mean much here.
"I don't mind, but he'll have to leave his army behind. Large numbers aren't always an advantage."
The walk to the island was quite peaceful. The castle on the island is right in the center, surrounded by vegetation that blocks our view. Everyone knows this is a perfect place for an ambush, so we try to move as quietly as possible, slowly making our way to the center of the island.
"Watch out!" Logan suddenly shouts.
I feel something and look up, I see several missiles heading our way, looking like the same missile that brought down our transport when we arrived on the island.
"I counted twenty missiles, enough to wipe out this piece of the island."
I tell them, making them more nervous.
"I'll stop them!"
Storm flies into the sky and extends her hand, the clouds instantly turn black, and hail begins to fall towards the enemy attack.
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
A series of explosions light up the sky as, luckily, several missiles are hit by the hailstorm summoned by her. But there are still eight left, almost upon us. With a wave of my hand, eight golden spears appear around me and fly towards them, hitting them perfectly and destroying the entire enemy attack. But the attack was only just beginning.
Several machines emerge from the ground around us, resembling the drones we have in Genosha. When I see the barrels of the guns emerging from the drones, I create a sphere of light around us just in time to defend against the shots.
"HAAAAAAAAAA!"
Logan, with his instincts, realized what the drones were, and even before I could protect the group, he had already jumped onto the first drone, which he destroyed with his claws. But he took several shots to the body, which for him must be irrelevant wounds since he attacked the next drone.
"People are approaching from above."
Xavier speaks, looking up. What was left of the enemy army was now attacking mounted on their Pteranodons from the sky. Storm stood in front of them using her powers to drive the winds crazy, causing the dinosaurs to get a little out of control.
"We have to help Logan!" Gambit shouted.
After trying to attack the sphere of light, the drones realized they could not penetrate my defense and focused all attention on the only one who was unprotected. Logan was fighting well, he managed to destroy some of them, but his injuries were increasing rapidly.
Trumm!
Nightcrawler teleports himself onto a drone and then does it once again, taking him out of our view. He continued making this move. I let Gambit, Ka-zar, and his tiger also pass through my sphere of light. Gambit throws several cards at the nearest drone, exploding it, one of them got behind him but was hit by his metal bat. Ka-zar and his tiger were working perfectly together, destroying any drone in their path.
The battle continued with destruction happening all over the place. The hardest fight was going on in the sky, Storm was doing the impossible to prevent the enemy from passing through. The reason she didn't end the fight soon was that she wasn't using her true strength for fear of killing the pilots. She could simply summon a lightning storm to end this fight.
"Why don't you turn off their minds, Xavier?"
I speak to Xavier, who was beside me inside the defenses with Rogue. Without absorbing someone's powers, she doesn't have much use in the fight that is happening. In fact, I think she came on this mission as a way to defeat me.
"That would be very cruel, plus they would die from the fall," he replied to me.
"Haaa!"
A scream makes us turn our attention once again to the sky, where we saw that Storm was wounded by an arrow in the shoulder.
"Enough of this. I don't have time to waste watching this ridiculous fight."
I fly high and stand in front of Storm, who is holding her shoulder, struggling to stay in the air.
"Let me show you how time is used as a weapon," I say, looking at her.
I draw a magic rune in front of me, and the weather obeys my command. Several typhoons descend from the sky, creating chaos among the aerial troops, dragging them and then throwing them in all directions. With one thought, the typhoons head towards the battle just below, destroying the drones, and then sweeping through much of the forest to eliminate any other possible threats. Of course, I avoided hurting any of my allies.
"How...?" Storm asks me in the sky after I make the typhoons disappear.
"Magic," I simply say.
After everything calmed down and more shocked looks, I healed the arrow wound on Ororo's shoulder. Perhaps because of the shocking things I've done so far, this did not generate much surprise. Soon we arrived at the center of the island, and at the entrance of the black castle, where someone was waiting for us.
"Welcome, everyone!" said the one in front of the group, whom I judged to be the leader, the man I knew well, in my opinion, the manipulator of all this confusion, Nathaniel Essex, better known as Lord Sinister.
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