Kubark smashed face-first to the mat.

At first he could not believe he was on the mat. Then he couldn’t believe he’d lost. Then he found it hard to stand up, and his head was woozy as he did so.

“Evaluation, Sattiva?” the woman glaring at his mind with crystalline knives inquired in a calm and unhurried voice.

The young Terran female with dark purple hair glanced at Kubark once. Finding out she was this fearsome teacher’s daughter and seemed about his own age had immediately sent ideas through his head... ideas that had fled screaming as crystalline knives had clustered about his thoughts, ready to cut at any instant!

Sattiva spoke slowly, “Well,” she began in a diplomatic tone of voice, “he isn’t clumsy in the normal sense. It seemed he knew what he wanted to do, but he’s not used to having his body do it. As if he was... bypassing normal reflexes somehow?” she judged.

“That is correct,” Professor Kwannon stated calmly. “His people are touchtekes of extreme power. So, they wield their bodies like extensions of their thoughts normally, as opposed to conditioning them.”

“Oh, so he has almost no muscle memory or conditioning!” the girl exclaimed brightly, giving him another pitiful look. Inside, he cringed, but hid it with an aloof face. “Wow. He has a LOT of training to do...” she said softly. For some reason Kubark looked back and forth between them, and had to stop himself from shivering.

He promptly stuck out his chest and declared, “I am the son of the Praetor of the Imperial Guard, trained at the Subguardian Academy! Bring on your training, I will master it all!”

Kwannon’s purple eyes remained unmoved, and she tilted her head.

The next moment a pair of strong hands grabbed one of his overly-long dyed mohawk bristles, and he was flying through the air before crashing to the ground again.

“Without some means of avoiding the risk of being grabbed in combat, long hair is a weakness in a fight,” a soft voice breathed in his ear, while he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes.

“The crest of a Strontian warrior is their pride!” he wheezed out reflexively.

There was no reply, but he had the sinking feeling that his words would come back to haunt him.

----

Six hours later, Kubark, son of Kallark, proud Strontian, future master warrior, envy of all who saw him, Very Important Snot, watched a golden Blade slice through his first foot-high mohawk crest as if it was air, less than a finger’s width from his head. He stared at the bruising around his eye, his bloody nose and puffy lip, and tried to remember when he had ever been beaten up so badly.

He couldn’t. And that it was by a female smaller than he was made it even worse!

“You have to learn how to move correctly,” Sattiva said next to him, her short and straight mindblade, yet still very hard and metallic, winking off, looking at him in the mirror as he rubbed a hand over his very short, bristling dark red hair, no longer the attention-getting bright crimson he preferred. “We will start on the obstacle courses and dancing tomorrow.”

“Dancing?!” he promptly blurted out in horror.

“The Shi’ar don’t dance, but you are not Shi’ar,” she pointed out. “In ninety-five percent and more of social gatherings among different species, dancing is part of their heritage... and Mother says that includes the Strontians. The battle-dances of your people were said to be exquisite and extremely difficult to master. I doubt you can learn them now. It will take years to work up to them.”

“I will learn them in a month!” he boasted promptly, horror vanishing before the pride in his glorious people!

“You will be lucky if you can walk correctly in a month,” the irritating girl scoffed at him softly, pinching his ear and making him yelp most unseemly. “Come, we are going for a run.”

“A-a run?” he repeated, unable to keep the unease out of his voice. He was going to end up looking ridiculous again when he kept falling over...

“If you can’t run, then you walk. When you fall down, you get up,” she said quietly. “You must do this until your body knows what to do, without you just dragging it along for the ride.”

His cheeks burned, and puffed up promptly, “I will be running and jumping before I go to sleep!” he swore loudly.

“I will settle for you not falling down every hundred meters,” she replied, dragging him along with her as she headed for the door. Trying hard not to look glum, because he was definitely not impressing her as he should have, the Very Important son of Kallark-Praetor-of-the-Shi’ar-Imperial-Guard headed for the path outside, continuing the process of beating the arrogance out of himself...

=======

The outskirts of Esblada, Catalonia, Spain...

Morgan waited calmly at the end of the path.

Everything was as Fedora had reported, including the extremely intricate and subtle Wards and spells upon this ground... and more underneath it. It had all been woven with extreme skill and subtlety, and an array of energies that few would have the experience to sense, let alone to spin and manipulate so deftly.

Yes, a Caster of extreme power and skill, with decades of practice at the art. Morgan sat there and waited for her, studying the magic ever more in depth, the different layers and techniques, the illusions and distractions meant to misdirect just such studies, and some of the fell and horrible things the magic was capable of doing.

Her Arcane Core had been pulsing all day as she wove her own spells in return.

The level of subtlety she was seeing was not something many Casters pursued, bespeaking a taste for illusion and enchantment magic that many avoided for its demands on creativity and patience. Most preferred wild and powerful overlays of reality, or brute force subjugation of thoughts, rather than clever turns and subtle twists that were so much harder to notice and fight.

The witch was coming.

Morgan rose to her feet as the red-headed woman came through the trees, dressed in long-sleeved shirt and skirts, her steps carefree and her attitude one of enjoying an evening walk through the woods.

That stopped when she saw the younger woman standing in front of her.

It was subtle, indeed, the way the world instantly shaded, and the magic began activating. Magic thrummed under the woman’s feet, instantly seeking to reach out and encapsulate the world, spin it to her will, and define reality.

Silver Magic thrummed at the edge of the Veil, and the magic waiting wasn’t unmade or countered. It just slammed into reality and failed to do anything.

The attractive face of the older woman turned down at this unusual development. “You should leave,” she said indifferently, staring at the dark-haired woman opposite her.

“The Crimson Witch of Chthon recommends I leave,” Morgan whispered back, but her Voice carried clearly, and the other actually flinched at the appellation. “Clearly, such words are of great weight.

“I bring greetings from your daughter. We are friends. I did a great deal of tutoring her in magic, particularly the Chaos Magic you foisted off on her.”

Hostile magic swirled, stressing and clawing at the reality of the world. Silver threads gleamed like steel, and refused to budge.

“I must say that you were magnificent. You concealed your powers from Erik Lensherr so well he had no idea who you were, and his master looked right past you. By the time they took a closer look at you, you had given away the Scarlet Witch Title to your daughter, changing her mutant gift away from the magnetism of her father to inheriting your own talent instead.

“And you even managed to give birth to them on Wundagore Mountain in homage to your master. Impressive, ‘Magda’. Impressive, indeed.”

The wind and leaves and sky were still trying to darken, but the threads woven through everything refused to budge.

“Don’t bother trying to drain the villagers,” Morgan went on, as a new pulse slammed into another weaving and was shredded, making Magda gasp and flinch, looking down at her hands as they began to bleed from under her nails. “You’re not sacrificing any souls to Chthon today, be it to save yourself or otherwise.”

“You have great power,” Magda conceded, the former Scarlet Witch frowning as Morgan took a step forward. “Do you think it is enough to deal with me, child?”

Morgan whistled once, and magic Sang.

Magda swayed in place as the Wards and Weavings she’d put into place so patiently in the area buckled and swayed like a ship in a storm. Magic was contorting, gathering to that Note, so sublime and profound, thundering in the air with the force of the Heavens, pure and glorious.

The Silver Threads rotated as they were played like the strings on a harpischord, and everything was cut through at once.

Magda’s knees crumpled at the shock, and she went down, gasping at the overwhelming power her opponent was displaying. It wasn’t of massive, overbearing quantity, but her magic seemed to be made of steel, and Magda’s mere gossamer, cut through like idle spiderwebs in the way of a slicing sword.

“You might have a chance if you had the Darkhold. If this was unholy ground. If you had a coven. If you could sacrifice the people. And if Chthon was watching and granted you His power.

“Go ahead and call on Him if you like. He won’t hear you here.” Morgan’s slow, measured steps continued, unbroken and unhurried.

“And why are you doing this?” Magda found the strength to demand, waving her hands, trying to find something to pull on, and finding the manasphere full of that awful, glorious Singing still surrounding her with Holy magic, which burned her Aura when she tried to touch it. “For my daughter?” she sneered. “To avenge some of the wrongs I have done in the past?”

“And continue to do...?” Morgan added softly, and the older woman flushed, looking up at her as Morgan stopped before her, staring down at the other calmly. “Trigivaga. Nositrome. Andellabula. Komogo. Places that no longer exist to most, removed from existence by the Crimson Witch of Chthon.

“You cover your tracks exceedingly well, but you’ve murdered at least nineteen people who might have stumbled onto what you were while living here, their only sin being curiosity... including four children.” Morgan’s voice was as calm as the sun on winter ice, staring down at her, missing nothing. “As well as at least a dozen Casters who sought you out, including several witches and cultists who only sought to learn from the most eminent of their kind, given how batshit-crazy Modred is about his status as a Chosen of Chthon.”

Magda took a deep breath, staring at her shrewdly. “And what do you intend to do now?” she asked, realizing that trying to bluff her way through this on a ‘reformed’ mindset wasn’t going to work, either.

“I’m waiting for you to spring your surprise on me, that knot of black magic you’ve got wrestling around inside you which you are getting ready to use. Are you going to spring some Chthonic surprise on me, or am I going to go in there and burn it out?” Morgan replied levelly.

Magda’s face twisted, and she lunged at Morgan, grabbing onto her hips and unleashing the Hex waiting inside her with all her willpower.

Silver fires flared under her fingertips, meeting the swirling dark magic straight on, while the whole world suddenly rang with a Chord of music so sublime and vast Magda nearly lost consciousness just hearing it echoing in her head.

The horrid, soul-consuming Curse she had attempted to lay burned away in silver fire, and a hand descended gently upon her head. Silver lights shot through her mind, and all her will and reason went away as the Light judged her.