Previously in HERALDS…

At the edge of the world, beyond the natural laws of time and space, the enigmatic Delphi consults her mystic Oracle at the behest of the sinister Lady Mandarin, Mistress of the Ten Rings.

Lady Mandarin seeks to learn the identity of the five women who will become her Heralds in the near future, but for reasons unknown Delphi instead reveals six Heralds: The Wasp, The Black Panther, Spitfire, Clea, Namora and a young Jotunheim frost giantess named Skadi. Before Delphi can learn more, her life is tragically extinguished byAmora The Enchantress, who doesn’t take kindly to being spied upon – and who correctly perceives the Mistress of the Rings as a threat to all existence.

Witnessing these events via a series of indistinct visions, Clea travels to the snowy wastes of an other-dimensional realm known as The White, inadvertently transporting her companions along with her. But The White is lair to a terrible threat – the vampiric ice maidens sometimes called the Yuki-Onna are a savage breed, and they proceed to ravage the disoriented Heralds, leaving them defeated and bloody… until the mysterious Bride of Nine Spiders comes to their aid and heals them. The Bride has made Clea her own personal prisoner but has sent the sorceress’ companions into the lair of her last remaining husband, King Zath of Yezud. Can our heroes survive…?

THE WHITE

Part V: The Future Lies Before You Like a Field of Driven Snow

By Meriades Rai

Suspended in a cocoon of silver silk and surrounded by hordes of spiders, poor Clea should have been frantic… but instead, now that her initial shock had faded, she was exhibiting a curious composure. Her violet eyes were narrowed in concentration, remarkable considering the cluster of black arachnids the size of walnuts that was swarming mere inches from her face. If the woman who was holding her captive had only been paying attention she might have been disturbed by this show of defiance, but the Bride of Nine Spiders was presently swaying in some languid dance on the other side of the chamber where Clea had awoken, shivering in delight as her spider brood cavorted beneath the chitinous shimmer of her dress, and in her black hair and over her alabaster skin.

So far as Clea was concerned, this was exactly the opportunity she needed.

Very few species throughout the multiverse truly understood the nature of magic, humans included. There were obvious exceptions to that rule, not least Doctor Stephen Strange – Earth’s formally designated Sorcerer Supreme, and Clea’s personal tutor and sometime-lover – but, to the majority, magic was phrased through the language of children’s stories with its comfortable imagery of wizards and spellbooks and wands, and of course colorful idioms, from expelliarmus to bibbity bobbity boo; it was all so very charming and harmless.

In truth, whilst arcane incantations and practiced hand gestures were a genuine aid to conjuration, especially for human mages, they were theatrical crutches at heart. Magic in essence concerned the channeling of energies beyond the regular scope of awareness, and that didn’t require speech or gesticulation; it merely needed aptitude and the power of spirit. The Bride, whoever and whatever she was, and as otherworldly as she was, had made a grave misjudgment in taking Clea prisoner in this fashion. She’d given warning that if Clea showed any sign of readying an enchantment, even a single word of magic, then she would be drowned in a hideous tide of wriggling, black furry bodies and legs.

But Clea was far more adept than that, and she had no need of words.

The spell she now conjured was born from a spark in her heart and it flowed hot in her blood – so very human – but she was descended from Faltine, energy in its most fundamental sense, and all that was required for the enchantment to spill forth was the faintest breath upon her lips, almost like blowing a kiss.

True magic.

As the chamber of webs erupted in a golden conflagration of light and needles, the spiders screamed and withered and burst, coldly but violently dissected at a cellular level into a gathering cloud of black and silver dust…

…and the Bride of Nine Spiders, bewildered and enraged, whirled upon her adversary with her mouth stretched abnormally wide and her eyes blood-scarlet and blazing as they sank back into her skull. She bent and twisted with an arched back, her limbs spread wide and her fingers lengthening to claws. Her hair came wild, like serpents. She shrieked from the pit of her stomach, her ribs tight and rippling beneath her dress.

Clea was reminded of the vampiric Yuki-Onna from the snowy White beyond the walls of this castle; only fitting as the Bride was one of them, one of nine devilish sisters who had developed a taste for blood and cruelty. She was more resistant to Clea’s attack than her dying litter; she didn’t wither. But that was fine. Free now of her silken bonds, which fell away from her in a disintegrating golden shower, Clea stepped forward and scowled, her tender soul driven by an uncommon fury.

“There’s a lot more where that came from,” she said, thrusting out a hand towards the Bride of Nine Spiders as she advanced to meet her. “Let me show you how my ancestors disposed of bugs…”

The Wasp reacted quickest to the danger bearing down on her and her companions, even as the others hesitated. She’d spent a good many years fluctuating in size and was no stranger to gigantic critters; her ex-husband Hank Pym had ridden ants like horses on a Nebraskan ranch, for goodness sake, and she’d come across more than her fair share of both house and garden spiders in her time. Not that the beast she was faced with now was any the less terrifying for that – there was something especially vile, not to mention hostile, about this behemoth – but it did mean she wasn’t momentarily paralyzed by the same instinctive fear that had gripped the others.

Unfortunately, shrinking down to insect-size and then shooting forward to release a barrage of bioelectrical stings was never going to prove effective enough…

King Zath of Yezud, a bullish black spider the size of a Limousine, came barreling along the crude stone passageway on thick, scrabbling legs, his eight black eyes blazing with hatred and spitting venom like hot embers from his mandibles. The Wasp zipped and banked in front of him, strafing the oncoming beast with sting blasts across its hammer-headed cephalothorax, but Zath barely slowed; instead he thrust forward with a pair of blunt forelegs, with greater speed and reach than the Wasp had anticipated. She gasped and arched her back in mid-turn to avoid one leg but the other clubbed her full in the face and sent her spiraling into the ceiling of the corridor with a hearty smack. She wheeled backwards, temporarily befuddled, and the giant spider reared swiftly behind her…

…but Spitfire was equal to the task, shrugging off her revulsion to make use of her enhanced reflexes. She darted forward, claiming Wasp’s tiny, stuttering body from mid-air and pulling her from danger a split second before Zath’s fangs stabbed and clicked at the place where his first intended victim had been. Spitfire then whirled on her heels, thrusting her other hand out before her and willing it to ignite with a rush of chemical flame.

Zath shrieked and scurried sideways, his legs folding nimbly beneath his hulking body and carrying him clear of the searing blast. He didn’t retreat, however; he simply hauled himself upwards so that he was now upside-down on the roof of the passageway, and recommenced his skittering advance above the heads of his prey.

“Monster!” Namora bellowed, hurling herself into the fray with typical abandon. Her intention was to pummel away at the spider’s hairy hide until she punctured outer flesh, giving her access to the tender, all-important innards – a strategy that usually worked wonders with all kinds of malicious ocean marauders. But, again, Zath was too quick and surprisingly canny. His body seemed to collapse and then shift far to one side, but it was actually an illusion created by the constant movement of his legs, not unlike a matador teasing a bull with his cape. Namora found herself flailing at thin air, then being turned and slammed into a wall with incredible ferocity, a leg raking down her back and shunting her so hard into the rock that it caused a small landslide of stone and dust.

Shuri came next, eyeing a potential opening with more tactical consideration than Namora. She wasn’t wearing her ceremonial Black Panther costume but she was still the Black Panther, champion of Wakanda; she was pure heart and determination, and she possessed a far more ruthless streak than her elder cousin and predecessor, T’Challa. T’Challa had always been an intelligent and resourceful combatant but his default mentality in any fight was always to incapacitate, no more; for Shuri, her mindset was wholly different. The Panther Goddess was a deity rooted in earth and blood, and this Black Panther – the new, true Black Panther – had no qualms about killing.

Zath dipped flat against the walls and ceiling as he noted Shuri’s approach, but the frontal attack he’d been anticipating never arrived. Instead Shuri cleverly shifted her weight at the last moment, grappling one of her adversary’s forelegs in a full body lock and then straining her back while pushing down with her knees… and Zath’s wiry leg snapped tight and then ruptured, bent backwards against one of its numerous joints. The spider shrieked and writhed, slithering in retreat upon its pulsating stomach, but Shuri held on, climbing the beast’s broken feeler like a rope and then repeating that same bow of her back, grunting as she snapped the same leg a second time.

It was bloody and it was primal. Zath shivered and then surged forward, overwhelmed with pain and fury, and this time he dislodged his attacker, slamming her to the floor and then immediately ducking his head in an attempt to bite her clean in half at the waist… but at the last moment Namora returned with a flurry of fists, beating the spider back while protecting her stunned companion.

“You are a warrior born, friend Shuri!” Namora declared. “Worthy of Atlantis, no less.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shuri muttered, wiping blood from her mouth. “But I still wish Clea had magically whisked me here in full damn costume…”

Zath reared, one foreleg hanging useless and upsetting a balance that was surprisingly delicate even for one so large. Namora was knocked aside like a skittle, only to be replaced by Spitfire, stabbing forward from one angle and then another and then another, all at a blur of high speed, her willowy frame lit bright with fire. Zath recoiled at a scurry, now alarmed. He wasn’t accustomed to such skillful and passionate resistance. In fact, he might even have retreated further, back into the web-encrusted darkness at the far end of the passageway, if not for one further intervention…

Skadi.

“In my world,” the frost giantess cried, “you are nothing more than an ugly pup! Do you wish to see how big I can grow…?”

The girl thundered forward, her mass increasing with every step. Her skin and hair was turning a beautiful, crystal white as the transformation came upon her, and within a heartbeat she was already filling the breadth of the corridor as Zath had done – but she wasn’t stopping there. In truth, she wasn’t sure that she could stop.

The Wasp glanced up from where she’d fallen, dazed and disheveled. When she saw Skadi, her lovely brown eyes shot wide.

“Skadi, no!” she shouted. “You haven’t got room! Hank–”

But it was too late. Hank made this mistake more than once, she’d wanted to say. Back in the beginning, when he was still getting used to the speed of mass transference and before he’d learned to control impulses fueled by adrenalin, he’d reverted to human-size from ant-size – and also grown from human-sized to giant-sized as the heroic Goliath – at the most inappropriate times, resulting in an awful lot of collateral damage. Once, when exploring the labyrinthine tunnels of an ant hill, he’d been alarmed by writhing larvae and had grown instinctively, bringing the tunnels – and the entire hill – crashing in upon itself. Janet Van Dyne hadn’t been present on that occasion…

…but she was here now, and she screamed as the over-excited Skadi unwittingly expanded beyond the capacity of the corridor and brought the stone walls and ceiling down upon them all in a devastating cascade.

“My children! You killed my children!”

Grief-stricken, the Bride of Nine Spiders hurled herself forward to meet Clea’s attack, grappling the sorceress about the midriff and hefting her from her feet with astonishing strength. The air was filled with a rain of tattered silk and glittering dust, the remnants of the Bride’s arachnid brood; Clea had been holding her breath, understandably disinclined the breathe in essence of disintegrated spider, but now she gasped and choked as her enemy’s long arms encircled her and commenced crushing the life from her.

The Bride hissed, her eyes blazing red, and her distended jaw widened still further. Clea baulked, her heart fit to burst. The ice-skinned witch was going to eat her, unless…

Clea concentrated, forcing raw magic to flow from her body in waves of energy, crackling along the Bride’s exposed flesh like electrical wires. The Bride shrieked and recoiled, loosening her grip. One of her arms burst into wicked blue flame and she fell sideways, thrashing at herself in desperation. Her hair also ignited, momentarily, before the brief surge of magic diffused.

“Don’t talk to me… about death…” Clea panted, gasping for breath. “You sent my friends to certain doom!”

“I saved them!” the Bride snarled. “Healed them. I recognized their potential, and sent them to annihilate Zath… because with the last remaining king’s demise, my sisters and I would finally be free of this nightmare world we’ve spun. I could have taken my children, made a home elsewhere…”

“Earth? You wouldn’t have been accepted there. Humans would have exterminated you, and with good reason; it would only have been a matter of time before you started harvesting them for food.”

“Tell yourself whatever you need to, to justify what you’ve done,” the Bride spat. “But you’ll only have to live with your guilt for a little while longer. I healed you too, woman, but one bite from me and that will be undone; you’ll wither in agony and–”

Suddenly the floor of the chamber lurched and then came apart with a deafening roar, and seconds later there was only dust and noise and splinters of stone as the entire room erupted. Clea cried out as she lost her footing, unable to focus enough to cushion herself with magic. She felt herself falling, the world giving way beneath her… but then she was collected in mid-air with a gentle bump, and it was as if she was flying, up into the bright, snow-filled skies.

“Sorceress!” a familiar voice exclaimed. “You’re alive!”

Breathless, Clea looked up into the enormous face of Skadi of Jotunheim, who was now towering from the scattered rubble of what had once been a room cast from stone and silk. Skadi had caught her friend with one hand as she’d begun to plummet, down into the shadowed depths of the underground labyrinth from where Skadi had risen. Now, as Clea looked down, she also saw her other companions emerging from the debris. There was Namora, cradling a wasp-sized Janet to her chest to protect her from the worst of the carnage as she clambered out of the pit… and there was Jacqui also, and Shuri, the two of them plastered with dust and web but seemingly unharmed as they struggled to freedom.

Clea beamed with delight… but then her smile fell as she realized that the threat wasn’t over, not by any stretch.

A gigantic spider was scrabbling from the ruins, rising like a thing of children’s nightmares from the black, overbalancing on one ruined foreleg but otherwise driven by the desire for revenge. It was King Zath, closing in on Jacqui and Shuri, neither of whom were yet aware of his close proximity. There was also the Bride of Nine Spiders, stumbling away into the snowy wastes that now, once again, filled the landscape as far as the eye could see… and advancing from the blizzard, out from the shadows of the surrounding forestland, there came the familiar drift of the Bride’s sisters, the Yuki-Onna, with their black hair and black eyes and their claws and teeth.

Too many enemies! Clea looked up at Skadi in panic, even as she readied to unleash a spell that surely wouldn’t be swift enough to save everyone…

…but Skadi was already reacting. With a roar of disgust, the frost giantess lurched forward and brought down one bare foot upon the rearing Zath, stamping him ferociously into the snow and dirt and rock and then twisting that same foot back and forth for good measure, squashing the beast into bloody pulp beneath her heel. She lacerated her ice-white flesh upon the stones, but didn’t care; it was enough that this one hideous beast was ended.

At the same time, Namora and the Wasp went on the attack, the latter still dazed but driven by a deep survival instinct. The pair of them worked in tandem, the Atlantean bludgeoning the first of the Yuki-Onna to step into her path while her companion zipped and wheeled in the snowy air above their heads, delivering a desperate barrage of bioelectric stings to those others in the vicinity.

The vampire maidens were taken aback by their enemies going on the offensive but rallied quickly, even as a couple of their number fell – but then Spitfire was among them too, all speed and flame, darting from one foe to another and then back again to distribute a flurry of punches swift enough to scatter the Yuki-Onna in all directions. Shuri was the last to join the assault, but she was a rapier blade among blunter instruments; armed with a jagged shrapnel of stone she went for throats, eyes and hearts, darkening the falling snows with her enemies’ otherworldly blood.

Before, when separated and confused – and also terrified, especially in Jacqui’s case – the heroes had been easy meat for the Yuki-Onna. Now the tide of the battle had turned. One by one, the vampire women fell.

Watching on, aghast at the slaughter of her sisters, the Bride of Nine Spiders wailed in despair.

“I should have left well alone!” she cried. “I should never have rescued you in the first place. But I was so sure, so sure…”

“If you’d just requested our help instead of treating us like cattle, we would have aided you. You’ve no one to blame for this but yourself.”

It was Clea’s voice. The Bride whirled now, her once-beautiful face contorted with poisonous fury as she confronted the sorceress whom she held accountable for these atrocities.

“Zath is… gone,” Clea murmured, trying not to think of the dark smear Skadi was presently cleaning from the sole of her foot. “Your sisters, they’ve already been irreversibly tainted by their taste for blood and cruelty, I’m sure. There’s no saving them. But there might still be a chance for you. I’m… sorry for your children. For how everything has happened. I wish it could have been different. But now you have the freedom you wanted. You could–”

“Without my beautiful ones, freedom means nothing!”

Clea regarded the Bride sadly. She was truly misshapen now, her soul as twisted as her body. She was on the verge of growing extra limbs, extra eyes. She was… turning. And there was no way back from that.

“You’re not humanoid, not any more,” Clea said. “Probably not for a very long time now. You’ve been infected with arachnid essence. You’re hostile, full of venom of so many kinds. And you’re my responsibility, now that I’m here.”

The Bride smiled hideously, head cocked to one side. Mandibles now clicked in her mouth, and black toxin drooled down her chin. “Responsible. Yes. So… what? You’ll kill menow? A true murderess as much as a sorceress?”

Above Clea’s head, Skadi turned her attention to the Bride. Grimacing, she raised one gigantic foot for a second time, ready to bring it down on her enemy’s helpless head. However, Clea waved her away, her expression solemn.

“No, Skadi. As I said: my responsibility.”

And then she weaved her fingers, and spoke two or three words beneath her breath with a heavy heart, and suddenly the swirling snows were filled with a dark, crimson light, snaking from her outstretched fingertips like ribbons and coiling towards the Bride. The Bride withdrew with a gasp, losing her nerve at the last and turning to flee into the colorless woodlands of The White, but Clea’s magic was too swift, too clinical. The ribbons wrapped about her even as four new legs sprouted from her back, bursting through her flesh and quickly beginning to lengthen.

She wished to scuttle away, to seek sanctuary in some warm, shadowy corner or other… but there were precious few shadows in The White.

The Bride began to scream as the ribbons tightened.

Clea turned away, her expression haunted. When Skadi reached down for her, her instinctive reaction was to push that gigantic hand away for she was so disgusted with herself that she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to show her kindness and understanding. But Skadi was patient, persisting past this initial rejection, and eventually Clea fell into her soft, cold palm with a sob.

Behind her, there was a cracking and splintering of bone and flesh, carrying on the bitter wind. The snows were patterned with oily black blood. The Bride of Nine Spiders screamed her last… and by this point there were no more Yuki-Onna left to witness their lost sister’s demise.

Clea’s companions approached her cautiously, exchanging wordless glances even as they brushed vaguely at their clothes, trying to rid themselves of the remains of the maidens they’d just been forced to put down.

“You did what you had to do,” Shrui said, eventually. “Situations like this, it’s kill or be killed. And… yes. You have a responsibility. To slay the monsters when you come across them.”

“Ask one hundred different people and you’ll get one hundred different interpretations of what a monster actually is,” Clea replied, her voice hollow. Shuri sighed and scowled, but said nothing more.

“Clea? Can you get us home, honey?” Jan asked, hovering gently above her friend’s head.

Clea’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she murmured. “Once I lock onto Stephen Strange’s mystic thread, the one I followed here, then we should be able to return to Earth easily enough. But there’s something we – I – need to do before that. My reason for journeying here in the first place…”

At the furthest reaches of The White – at the edge of the known world – there was a mountain, and at the peak of that mountain there was a temple, and in that temple there was a room, encased within walls of what appeared to be marble and bronze but which were likely merely constructs of imagination. In the heart of the chamber there was a pool set into the stone floor. The pool’s waters were curiously opaque. The air smelled of snow and silk and blood.

This wasn’t the first time that Clea had visited the scrying chamber of the Oracle, but her previous experience had been far more spiritual. Now, treading these smooth stone tiles in her physical form, the sorceress was unnerved. The Oracle existed outside of known space and time, a pocket of void within The White itself, and it reeked of death. Clea had seen quite enough of death.

“This is it?” Jan asked, quietly. Clea nodded.

“In my vision, a naked waif of a girl with honey-gold hair reclines at the edge of this pool, trailing her fingers in the water and conjuring visions of her own,” she said. “She witnesses images of each of us in turn in the pool’s surface, and relays what she sees to a watcher in the shadows – the same woman who has instructed the girl to consult the Oracle in the first place. This woman is clad in golden robes and an ornate masque, and she bears rings upon every finger.”

“The ever-mysterious Mistress of the Ten Rings,” Shuri said. “You know what that says to me? The Mandarin.”

“You think he’s cross-dressing now?” Jacqui asked. “I mean, those robes of his… I think Jan designed a dress like that for last season’s collection, am I right?”

Janet ruffled her hair. “Probably not the best time for jokes, sweetie.”

“Well, dear, it’s either that or gin, and I’m all out of gin.”

Clea stepped forward tentatively and gazed into the milky waters of the pool. She couldn’t discern her own reflection, but after a moment or two she became aware of certain images beginning to form. She crouched down, shivering; she was acutely conscious that she now occupied the same supine position as Delphi, the girl from her vision, once had. Like Delphi, she reached forward and stirred the waters with her fingertips.

“I see him,” she said, quietly. Jan looked on in concern.

“Who?”

“The Mandarin. Ancient, Chinese. Green and gold silk robes, embroidered with dragons and runes. Evil eyes. Utterly cruel.”

The others exchanged glances. “Where?” Jan pressed.

“In his tomb.”

“His what?” Shuri spluttered. “Wait. The Mandarin’s dead…?”

“Everyone dies someday,” Clea said, softly. “The Oracle exists outside of time. I’m… witnessing the future here. How far in the future is anyone’s guess. But his eyes are fixed open, and they’re every bit as malevolent as they were in life. His arms are crossed about his chest. He’s wearing his rings. But she’s there too. The Mistress. Stepping out of the shadows. She… has a knife.”

The others heard Clea swallow, and saw her shudder.

“The rings won’t leave his fingers,” she whispered, “so she removes the fingers, one by one. She places them in a jar of smoking liquid, some kind of acid. Burns away flesh and bone until only the rings remain. Then she claims them.”

Jan made an expression of dismay. “I’ve met the Mandarin,” she said. “Not saying it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy, but… ick. He would not like that, if ever he was to find out. I mean, if someone was to tell him what was going to happen to him after he died? Not that I plan on paying him a visit out of courtesy or anything, just to say, hey, buddy, I hope you’re sitting down, because you won’t believe–”

“No one should be privy to the finer details of their own mortality,” Namora growled, causing Jan to quieten. The Atlantean was obviously thinking of her own recent history, and her near-death experience at the hands of her enemy Llyra that had resulted in her being entombed in a casket in the depths of the ocean for decades. You couldn’t blame her for being sensitive.

“I see other things now,” Clea declared. “Costumed women. Some I recognize as villains, but not all. I see the Mistress of the Rings approaching each of them in turn, making offers…”

“Back in Manhattan, the woman who accosted us in the Cat Lick Club?” Jan said. “Honey Bee. She said the Mistress had paid her a visit, then given her a ring and powers to go with it. She lost a finger too, when she was defeated and the ring vanished.”

“She’s buying herself some talent,” Jacqui murmured. “A team. To go up against us? Or something else?”

“Suki,” Clea said, suddenly. That earned everyone’s attention.

“Suki Hashioka, the kid from London?” Shuri snapped. “What’s she got to do with this?”

Clea was hesitant. “I… it’s not clear. But she’s part of this. And there’s someone else. An Asgardian, blonde hair… a sorceress.”

“Oh, hell on high heels,” Jan whistled. “Amora? The damn Enchantress is involved as well?”

Even Shuri looked unsettled now, understandable given the mention of Asgard. T’Challa, her cousin, had been wounded months before during a skirmish in Niflheim; it was the Wasp herself who’d struck the crippling blow, but the battle had been orchestrated by a witch named Lorelei, the Enchantress’ younger sister. T’Challa was still to show signs of recovery, his injury exacerbated by Asgardian magic.

“The Enchantress helped me escape Jotunheim and travel to Midgard,” Skadi said, rather defensively. “Is she truly bad? I thought her kind, if a little… how do you mortals say…?”

“Louche,” Jan suggested.

“Slutty,” said Shuri. “Tarty. Trolloping, strumpet-heeled whore.”

Jan frowned. “You know, I’m totally sure that trolloping isn’t actually a word. But, with regard to Amora…”

Many travel here, to the mountain at the edge of the known world and to the Oracle of Delphi, but so very few appreciate the portents they receive…

Clea heard the soft voice at her ear and when she glanced up she realized that the girl with the honey-gold hair was now beside her, smiling shyly. Delphi.

“She means to usurp Death herself,” Delphi breathed. “To become Death, the destroyer of worlds. It began with my death… but it can also end there. Do you see, Clea of the Faltine? You will travel here once more, to the Oracle. Save me and you’ll save everyone and everything. But first, you must save the child. Understand?”

The girl began to fade then, a spirit upon the ether, outside of time.

Clea stood quickly from the edge of the pool, her cloak swirling about her. She turned to the others, abruptly aware that they’d been talking among themselves and wouldn’t have seen Delphi appear to her, or bear witness to those final words of warning. She wondered how much she should reveal. Was there a reason that, perhaps, the message had been for her and her alone?

“Suki Hashioka,” she said, her voice edged with newfound determination. “To damnation with the Enchantress; we’ll deal with her, and anyone else, when the time comes. For now, Suki’s in danger…

“…and we’re the only ones who can save her!”