In Hawaiian mythology it’s said that Poli’ahu – the most beautiful and powerful of the island’s four snow goddesses, and also the most cruel – once froze the very soul of a much beloved mortal ali’i, or chief, named Aiwohikupua, for spurning her love, and that she repeatedly chilled and thawed the blood of Aiwohikupua’s intended bride, a Maui princess, for the sole crime of being a romantic rival.

Poli’ahu is not a goddess to be crossed. And nor, it’s also said, is her great adversary and sister deity Pele, the goddess of fire and lightning and, most pertinently, volcanoes. According to legend, Poli’ahu rules the north of Hawaii’s Big Island from the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, the world’s highest peak when measured from the oceanic base, at an estimated height of more than ten thousand meters; Pele, in contrast, has made her home in the active volcanoes of the south, and rules from the summit of Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth. Once, when challenging mortals to partake in traditional holua sledding on the slopes of Mauna Kea, Poli’ahu was almost undone by her scheming sister; posing as a beautiful maiden, Pele summoned lava flows from below ground to interrupt Poli’ahu’s hitherto swift descent, a base form of cheating. Since that day, legend says, Poli’ahu and Pele have been united only in their mutual loathing for one another.

Of course to most people, even in this world of marvels, such legend is merely that: conjured tales passed on from generation to generation. But sometimes, more often than anyone likes to think, the machinations of mythology are true. And besides, there is another facet to this intriguing story that often remains unspoken:

Pele loved chief Aiwohikupua too, and when her sister stole him away, their story was only ever destined to end in bloodshed…

“She seeks to challenge me once again,” Poli’ahu breathed, as she languished naked in the crisp and bitter snows of the peak of Mauna Kea, staring up through the whirling ice upon the wind, staring out into the glitter-blue of altitude, up above the clouds. “She calls upon a new avatar, through whom she will strike against me, and awaken the power of the volcano beneath me. She cares nothing for the consequences, for the chain reaction that will see this modern world writhe and burn and scream in lakes of fire, beneath skies blackened with ash…”

There was one other soul adrift upon the glacial slopes, but ali’i Aiwohikupua was in no position to respond, his dislocated spirit having been frozen in torment these past centuries upon centuries. Poli’ahu slithered towards Aiwohikupua now, on her stomach through the snow, her rime-whitened hair trailing down her back and her bare breasts swelling against the relentless bite of frost. She smiled maliciously as she pressed herself against the inert form of the ali’i, insinuating herself upon every petrified nuance of him, relishing his silent moans.

“She will not find me defenseless, however,” Poli’ahu breathed in Aiwohikupua’s ear, shedding droplets of ice from her wriggling hips like diamond dust. “Oh, no. For I too will arm myself against my sister’s incursion… with a weapon forged by another pantheon of gods, no less.”

Poli’ahu flexed one slender wrist and an artifact rose from the snows before her: a seemingly innocuous chest of ivory and wood, banded with gold and crested with a tiny skull, glittering in the hoary gleam of the ice peak. The artifact was silent. Dead. But not for long.

Poli’ahu’s smile grew, and it showed her perfect, pointed teeth.

“The Casket of Ancient Winters, of true Asgardian lore,” she whispered, her voice an icy kiss upon the wind. “A treasury of destruction, to be sure. But know this, my love. If I must annihilate this world and every living thing upon it to ensure my sister does not prosper in her conquest…

“…then, by my word marked, I shall not hesitate.”

AS SOON GO KINDLE FIRE WITH SNOW

Part III: Winters of Our Discontent

By Meriades Rai

“No. Absolutely not. Uh-uh. No, no, no.”

Reed Richards glanced over the top of his half-moon spectacles as Johnny Storm raged before him, the younger man’s ire so inflamed that smoke was quite literally pouring from his ears. It was overly dramatic, certainly, but Reed couldn’t help but be amused by Johnny’s theatrical flair.

“So that means you’ll think about it, right?” Reed asked, deadpan. Johnny scowled.

“There is nothing – nothing – that you could offer me to make me change my mind on this,” the blond man snapped, wagging a flaming finger in his brother-in-law’s direction. “It’s disgusting. It’s obscene. It’s against all the laws of human decency.”

“Johnny, listen to yourself. All I’m asking is for you to make an exception just this one time…”

“No!” Johnny stamped his foot, narrowly missing the tail of a flying monkey in a fez. The Cowardly Lion gasped, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow cooed, and Dorothy clasped her hands to her cheeks and tendered an exclamation of distress. Also, somewhere, a wicked witch was melting. Johnny picked up a monkey by the scruff of the neck and waved it. “And another thing,” he said, his eyebrows smoldering. “Seriously, now. What the hell, Reed…?”

“Three-dimensional hard light projection combined with molecular restructuring on a random cycle, as determined by pre-programmed data,” Susan Storm-Richards explained, affectionately removing the distressed monkey from her brother’s grasp and ruffling its furry forehead before letting it fly free. “In other words, holograms with mass as well as form. The next stage of virtual reality. Reed’s converted this room into a dimensional pocket animated by thousands of incongruent but nonetheless familiar images.”

Johnny looked aghast. “So, what, Reed’s now working in a lab that’s decorated in a scene from Mary Poppins?”

Sue stared at her brother, equally appalled. “Mary… good grief, Jonathan. Don’t you have any appreciation of the classics…?”

“Are we ready to follow the yellow brick road?” asked the sensational She-Hulk, looming at Sue’s shoulder. She had a small, scruffy gray dog in a picnic basket under her arm and was wearing a pair of ruby slippers that, remarkably, suited her extremely well.

“Johnny’s having a tantrum,” Reed murmured. “And, Jennifer, if you’re thinking of taking anything from this room with you, please be aware—”

“—that it’ll cease to exist outside these dimensional confines, I know, I know. I just thought it was amusing. Can I guess Johnny’s problem?”

“Hello? Standing right here? My problem is—”

“Me, I would imagine.”

Namor the Sub-Mariner strode forward, smiling broadly as he passed Johnny, his dark eyes directed at someone else entirely. “Susan,” the Atlantean purred, reaching for the blonde woman’s hand. “I’ve been utterly remiss in saying what a privilege it is to enjoy the pleasure your company once more…”

Susan grimaced, keeping her hands firmly at her sides. “I saw you kick those Munchkins, you know,” she said, sternly. Namor affected a look of innocence.

“See?” Johnny declared. “Reed! You can’t do this. You want a ready-made replacement for Ben on the team? We’ve got She-Hulk. This is the Fantastic Four, remember? You, me, Sue, Jen. Just like old times. We don’t need the funky fishman here, he’ll just spend his time bullying small people in rainbow hats and sniffing Sue’s derriere like a lovesick puppy—”

“Jonathan!”

“Watch your tone, Storm!” Namor snarled. In the background, Munchkins squealed. Reed winced and pressed his fingertips to his temples.

“We’ve been over this, Johnny,” he said. “I can’t accompany the team on any missions, let alone one as potentially dangerous as this, when my powers are in flux. And because the satellite radar feed I’ve been analyzing clearly indicates that the present level of escalating volcanic activity in Hawaii is reaching critical mass and that there’s a significant power source radiating from below the main body of the island, in the ocean itself, someone of Namor’s capabilities could prove invaluable; especially as he’s here already. If I thought we could wait for Walter Newell to return my calls it would be another matter, but he – as Stingray – is currently investigating oceanic anomalies across the other side of the Atlantic, and we can’t afford to let time slip by, not after when you’ve told me about your encounter with Volcana and the Lava Men.

“Besides,” Reed said, fixing Namor with a baleful glare, “just because we’re collaborating on this occasion doesn’t mean he’s a member of the team.”

Namor smirked. “Good enough for Steve Rogers’ Avengers and the Invaders, but not for your little familial get-together, Richards? Whatever terrible things do you suspect I’ll get up to in the midst of your precious clan…?”

Reed said nothing more, but everyone saw him flick an aggravated glance in the direction of his wife. Susan’s smile in return was placatory but equally vexed, and she pointedly ignored Namor when he turned towards her once more with an arrogant swagger.

“Never going to happen, fish-sticks,” Johnny growled in the Atlantean’s ear as he shrugged past him. “Kick as many plump little leprechauns as you like, and keep on making a macho ass of yourself, but my sister can’t stand you any more than she can put up with the smell of you.”

“You’ll never understand women, Storm,” Namor hissed in turn. “You—”

“Children, please,” She-Hulk sighed, stepping between the two squabbling men. “Let’s save the testosterone-fuelled aggression for Hawaii and whatever we find there, eh?”

A dimensional portal flickered into existence a short distance away, at the end of a spiraling path of yellow bricks. Susan was blushing a fire engine red as she headed towards the gateway, fighting back the urge to link arms with her companions and skip as she was cheered on by Munchkins and flying monkeys alike, and Johnny and the She-Hulk followed on behind. Only Namor paused to glance back over his shoulder at Reed, who was watching with eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.

“A moment of seriousness amidst this tomfoolery you’ve deliberately and meticulously concocted as a distraction, Richards,” Namor said, coldly. “Your family may be happy to indulge your eccentricities but I can see through you, as I always have. You loathe me even more than the Torch does. You wouldn’t countenance my presence here in your sanctum, or as an ally regardless of what expertise I’m able to offer, if you had any choice. What truly ails you, Richards? Not the mere fluctuation of your powers, surely; that’s a common enough occurrence, one you and the others have experienced a dozen times or more since your genesis. This is more severe, isn’t it? For you in particular…”

Reed Richards leaned back in an old rocking chair, reflected gleam catching in his spectacles and obscuring his eyes. He didn’t smile. Didn’t scowl. But there was no real rage about him, more a dying of the light that Namor couldn’t help but notice.

“Be careful in Hawaii, Namor,” Reed said, quietly. “My investigations thus far suggest upheaval on more than just a geophysical scale. You could be heading into all manner of peril the moment you step across the dimensional threshold out into the Pacific Ring.”

Namor smiled thinly.

“Yes,” he replied. “But don’t worry, old friend. I and the rest of the new Fantastic Four shall undoubtedly be able to handle any menace that presents itself, yes…?”

Mauna Loa erupted without warning with the setting sun, spewing lava fountains some two hundred feet high into the gathering twilight and bringing terror to the population of Hawaii’s Big Island. The volcano hadn’t exhibited significant activity in over a quarter of a century but now the caldera was shifting and that familiar, inky-indigo silhouette upon the horizon was transformed forever; it was brightened by a menacing amber burn at the summit and by spurting jets of liquid orange-gold, followed swiftly by fast-moving fingers of lava slithering down the shallow black slopes, through the thick forests and on towards the cities and settlements at the volcano’s base.

Death had awakened.

There had been no noteworthy near-surface seismic motion to augur the eruption as would have been expected – and when the peak of Mauna Loa’s sister mountain Kilauea also exploded in a shower of lava and pyroclastic cloud little more than an hour later, the spectacle and the threat it posed to all life upon the southern stretch of the island was unprecedented. Frightened crowds gathered at the Hawaiian Volcanic Observatory and gazed to the southeast, where Kilauea’s violent outbreak transformed the clouded skies to the color of blood and fire, then looked to the west, where a skirt of spreading lava was now ringing the mountainside with a pulsing glow. Kilauea’s crater floor collapsed with an almighty roar that echoed out for miles across the ocean, dropping some five hundred feet and splintering the outer slopes and ridges with a chaotic cluster of fumaroles, hissing vents that spat sulfuric ash and liquid flame in all directions.

Up close, it looked like the end of the world. And no one was closer to the horror than Marsha Rosenberg, a woman whose altered genetic composition had rendered her a volcanic elemental in human form. She could transform flesh and blood into superheated plasma and basalt and rhyolite and pumice, and she was fire and power incarnate… but she wasn’t present upon the turbulent slopes of Mauna Loa by choice, and to exist at the heart of such destruction revolted her to the heart.

“My people have forgotten me,” murmured the stunning goddess who stood away to Volcana’s side, staring down upon the sprawl of the southern island. “They trade my name for the sake of tourism and local flavor but they forget the truth of who I am, what I represent. They need to be reminded that it’s always a folly to neglect one’s gods…”

Volcana looked upon Pele, Hawaiian goddess of lightning, fire and volcanoes, and she wept molten beads of gold. “You’re going to kill them all? All those devoted families, their children…?”

“Not kill,” Pele said with a lovely, wistful smile. “At least… not all of them. There will be casualties, certainly, but only what’s necessary to restore the rightful order of things. And you? You shall be my living weapon, my avatar. Beautiful, wonderful creature that you are.”

Pele was tall and slender, humanoid in appearance but perhaps only to Volcana’s eyes, with cinder-burn flesh and hair of cascading fire. She was an effigy of flame and rock herself, a sister in elemental terms, but significantly more long-lived and powerful. It was with a mere flex of an elegant wrist that Pele had coaxed these terrible eruptions, the magma reserves far beneath the mantle crust underfoot proving hers to command. Volcana could never have conceived of such potency.

“And you shall also herald my long-overdue vengeance against my hated sibling, the snow witch from the north,” Pele breathed, her gold-black eyes bright as she stared with utter joy upon the splattering lava fountains lacerating the darkening skies overhead. “O, Poli’ahu, do you see? Do you understand? Your eminence has declined even more fiercely than my own, but with your imminent annihilation I shall reclaim all territories and demand worship from every mortal heart. And you shall finally pay in icy blood for what you stole from me…”

Volcana knew nothing of Poli’ahu, Goddess of the Snows, or of the ancient enmity between the sisters, but she recognized madness when she saw it; even divine beings could be dangerously insane, it seemed. But she couldn’t retaliate, couldn’t resist Pele’s control. She was as much the goddess’ pawn as the legions of Lava Men that Pele had sent to conscript Volcana from New York, so many miles distant. Volcana had traveled here in the form of a fast-running river of plasma and ash, through the crust of the earth and ocean bed, and now here she was resigned to her fate. She was, as Pele had suggested, nothing more than a weapon to be aimed – no different now than to when Doctor Doom had taken her human shell and imbued it with the cosmic power of an alien world.

But, under the authority of a demented goddess, she was a far more lethal prospect. Volcana thought back to her recent encounter with a small band of heroes in New York, heroes who – as the human part of her was aware – had only wanted to help her.

Where were those heroes now…?

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.”

The Human Torch frowned at She-Hulk. “Kansas? We weren’t in—”

“Hush, Johnny,” the Invisible Woman interjected. “Your cultural ignorance beyond Spongebob depresses me more severely than you can imagine. But, speaking of annoying aquatic oddballs… I think we’ve just lost ours.”

Five seconds after materializing on a freezing, snow-capped mountainside beneath an eerily tinctured sky, the four companions were already witnessing the departure of one of their number as Namor took to the air, heading unerringly in the direction of the ocean without a backwards glance. If the Atlantean held any fascination for the bright seam of burning orange that flickered on the southern horizon he wasn’t in any mood to discuss; perhaps, too his credit, he recognized the severity of the situation and wasn’t willing to waste time with further verbal sparring with the Torch. Even so, there was surely no more apposite demonstration of the man’s aversion to operating as part of a team.

“Isn’t Hawaii supposed to be hot?” She-Hulk muttered, shivering despite her gamma-boosted durability to extreme temperatures.

The Invisible Woman was suffering even more plainly, already shivering and turning pale. Her brother moved close, surrounding her in an immaculately controlled corona of flame that warmed her without threatening to burn, but the three of them knew that even the Torch wouldn’t be able to function in this environment for very long.

“We’re too high,” Sue said. “Reed didn’t want the teleport gateway to open out too close to the volcanic activity he was monitoring on the data feed, but I doubt he’d made provision for this – unless that same data suggested unspecified goings-on in this neck of the woods too. Damn Namor! He could have run reconnaissance for us before flying off, and I’ll freeze if Johnny goes. So much for teamwork. We have to—”

“Mortal fools! You trespass in my domain?”

The three heroes turned at the sound of a woman’s voice and saw a semi-naked female, unclothed save for a curl of curious cloth that resembled icy mist more than any traditional fabric, striding from the snowy darkness. The woman possessed an ageless beauty and hair and skin of purest white, but her eyes were black with fury. Before anyone could react she extended a slender hand and released a cloud of lazily swirling ice crystals that engulfed the Human Torch, swiftly solidifying into a frosty cocoon and dimming the light of his blaze.

“Johnny!” Sue cried, retaliating with an instinctive thrust of a psionic forcefield that slammed into her enemy’s midriff and sent her spinning backwards through the night. She-Hulk stepped forward and, with a grunt, unleashed an almighty punch that cracked the glacial cocoon; it didn’t shatter outright, but the Torch’s plasma flame did the rest, melting through his prison from the inside out. He stumbled free, his fire sputtering but not extinguished.

From the darkness there came a woman’s snarl.

“I assumed Pele’s concubine would be the most obvious threat,” hissed Poli’ahu, goddess of the snows, as she stared in the Torch’s direction. “A mistake on my part… but not one I’ll repeat. What manner of mortal woman are you, girl with such a force of mind?”

“Not girl. I go by the name Invisible Woman these days, thanking you kindly.”

“Is that so…?”

The ice queen thrust out a fist and the ground beneath Susan’s feet ruptured in an explosion of frozen volcanic rock, but her experienced foe had already encased herself in a forcefield bubble and in the next instant she vanished, manipulating wavelengths of light to disappear from Poli’ahu’s view. The goddess was momentarily nonplussed, but then her black eyes narrowed.

“O, indeed,” she breathed. “Far more than mortal…”

She flailed another fist and again the elements at her command responded, this time gathering into a localized cyclone of ice shrapnel. The air itself began to freeze, crystallizing with a lethal beauty, and Susan gasped in pain as the swiftness of the attack took her by surprise. She rematerialized in flickering stages, her power failing as the intense cold overwhelmed her, but she managed another counterstrike before she fell, assailing Poli’ahu with a flurry of psionic lashes that sent the goddess staggering.

Astonished at both her enemies’ affront as well as their obvious prowess, Poli’ahu was about to end the battle with a brutal and wide-ranging ice attack when the towering figure of She-Hulk loomed above her, her fist raised.

“Can’t help but notice that you’ve overlooked me so far,” the jade giantess declared. “My other self is used to that, but She-Hulk? That’s just obtuse.”

A massive green fist struck like a thunderbolt, almost removing Poli’ahu’s head from her shoulders as it drove her bodily down into the packed ice, her naked limbs flailing. The entire mountainside seemed to shake, not necessarily with the impact but more in sympathy with its elemental mistress. Across from She-Hulk, the Torch and the Invisible Woman held on to one another as the ground beneath them shivered…

…and then both were floored by an unexpected blow from above, a bludgeoning hammer of solid rock sweeping down out of the night and taking them unawares. She-Hulk whirled at the sound of the attack, her emerald eyes shooting wide as she witnessed her teammates’ fate.

“No!”

“I’m sorry,” a whispered voice carried on the icy breeze overhead. “I have no choice but to do my goddess’ bidding…”

She-Hulk glanced up to see the familiar glowing form of Volcana, half basalt and half shimmering lava, drifting close on a haze of scorching ash. She prepared herself to leap but her enemy was already unleashing the full force of her power upon her, a raging tide of liquid flame that engulfed her and buried her, screaming and writhing, in a cloud of hissing steam where fire struck ice.

Volcana bowed her head in shame. Directly above her, also drifting on a black, pyroclastic miasma, the goddess Pele looked on in demented glee.

“Forget these mortals!” she cried. “Find Poli’ahu – and destroy her in my name before she has a chance to recover…”

Poli’ahu had always been most comfortable in human form, almost a precondition for gods and goddesses in these modern times where symbolic worship had all but died, but this tendency had proved her downfall in confronting her remarkable human foes. Battered by the emerald-skinned witch she had quickly reverted to a more elemental state, and it was as a wraith of freezing fog that she drifted swiftly from the immediate battlefield and back to the very summit of Mauna Kea, where the frozen soul of her beloved Aiwohikupua resided – and where her prized weapon could be found.

“My vile sister assaults me in my own province,” Poli’ahu hissed. “She spurs her own half of the realm to volcanic frenzy, rides the tail of her avatar across the threshold between us when she would be powerless to do so by her own merit… and she sends oddly-powered mortals against me? Her arrogance truly knows no bounds. But we have a surprise in wait, don’t we, my love? Long have we anticipated this moment…”

Poli’ahu reached for the Casket of Ancient Winters, tendrils of freezing mist now solidifying to nimble fingers once more. She clutched at the skull-shaped clasp, almost clumsy in her eagerness – just as, behind her, a plume of fire and ash signaled the arrival of her great adversary.

Poli’ahu glanced back over her bare shoulder, through the snowfall of her hair, her eyes black and bright. Reflected in her gaze came the onrush of Volcana, burning fiercely and intent on deicide. Poli’ahu smiled.

“Damn us all then, sister,” she whispered. “But damn you most, to a hell not of fire but of ice incarnate…”

And then she opened the Casket, causing that very hell indeed to spill…

NEXT ISSUE: Pele, goddess of volcanoes versus Poli’ahu, goddess of the snows… with the Fantastic Four caught in the middle! Namor may be the team’s only hope – so where in the name of all the brine in the oceans has he got to? And can even the cosmic fires of Volcana stand against the frozen frights of the Casket of Ancient Winters…? Be here next time when As Soon Go Kindle Fire With Snow concludes!