Janet Van Dyne was used to dealing with giants; after all, she’d spent a number of years married to a man whose altered physiology allowed him to grow to gargantuan size at will. And, in addition to that, when you’re able to shrink down to the size of an insect, everyone is a giant. The winsome Wasp was, therefore, the first person to react to the fact that a Jotunheim Frost Giantess had just manifested in the middle of the King’s Road in West London – because, judging by her furious expression and the fact that she was bellowing out a heartfelt roar of indignation, the behemoth was intent on causing trouble.

Not that there wasn’t quite enough of that already going around…

The Wasp shot forward, hands outstretched, and delivered a swift double-pulse of bioelectrical sting to her enemy’s face. The giantess, Skadi, hadn’t even seen the miniature woman’s approach – she had a hard enough time noticing anything that was five feet tall, let alone five inches – and so the blast between her eyes was not only entirely unexpected it was decidedly painful to boot. It caused her to shriek and stagger backwards, reaching out to steady herself and plunging a clumsy hand through the upper story window of an office block above an expensive fashion boutique. The Victorian façade immediately began to crumble, sending a shower of brick, stone and glass down onto the street below.

“Leave me alone!” Skadi cried, thrashing her enormous fists in blind rage. “Stop attacking me! Why are you all trying to hurt me?”

The Wasp dodged the giantess’ blows with ease, sweeping one way and then the other on her beautiful wings and then cutting in for another attack, deliberately angling her strike so that she could push her enemy away from the surrounding buildings this time. However, she never got the chance to deliver a second sting; whereas she was highly adept at dealing with gigantic fists she was wholly unprepared for the way Skadi then opened her mouth and exhaled a sudden gust of freezing air, in not dissimilar fashion to blowing a kiss.

The air temperature in the immediate vicinity dropped, enough to sublimate water vapor into ice – and the Wasp was at the heart of it, unable to maneuver clear even when it became apparent what was happening. She felt her skin and clothes begin to freeze, and her gossamer wings to suddenly tremble and grow heavy with a weight of frost. She dipped and spun, too overburdened to keep herself aloft, and it was only her enhanced resistance to harm that allowed her to survive as she went into an uncontrollable dive, impacting with a sharp smack into the roof of a parked car and then bouncing away.

It was all very undignified.

Skadi righted herself, recovering from the Wasp’s attack and now glaring down on those foes unwittingly arrayed before her. She saw a beautiful woman with curled hair of silvery-white, dressed in a cloak and leggings of violet, indigo and blue; she saw another woman, blonde haired and dressed in a costume of scarlet and gold; and she saw a third, with hair the color of summer and with flesh tinctured with greenish-blue, dressed in a dark blue toga. This last woman was brandishing an energy rifle and Skadi flinched at the sight of it, her memory prickling.

“You!” she snapped. “You shot me!”

She scowled and drew herself to her full height, her shock of white hair sparkling in the sunlight and her alabaster skin glittering with rime, a glacial peak amidst the cars and buildings and general trappings of the modern city.

“Little people of Midgard,” Skadi said, crossly. “I’m thinking you need to learn some manners…”

THE ABYSS

Part II: And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow, And it Grew Wondrous Cold

By Meriades Rai

Shuri of Wakanda stirred with a slow groan, but within a moment of becoming sensate she was on her feet, scrabbling clear of the debris where she’d lain unconscious these past few minutes. Her right shoulder ached and her opposite leg spasmed but she ignored both areas of discomfort, instead forcing herself to concentrate on assessing her circumstances and recalling recent events.

She’d been sitting at a table on a café patio, exchanging pleasantries – or not – with Janet Van Dyne. Then the café fascia had exploded and she’d been knocked senseless. Van Dyne…? She was gone. Had she shrunk at the last moment and been buried under stone and glass, or…?

Shuri twitched and turned, instinctively giving the enhanced perception of her senses full sway. Judging by what she could see and hear there was a commotion ensuing one street away, around a corner away to the left. People running, car horns, the crash and splinter of property destruction… Shuri grimaced. Inexperienced as she was, she recognized the telltale signs of superhuman conflict. Perhaps the Wasp was involved, perhaps not. Shuri didn’t particularly care.

As she began rummaging through the debris for her briefcase, and the unique costume contained within, she knew one thing only.

It was time for the new Black Panther to make her public debut…

“Any time you’re ready,” Jackie Falsworth – the heroine Spitfire – informed her companion Clea as the giantess bore down upon them. “You know, wave your handy-dandy magic wand and all that…”

Clea looked confused. “I don’t have a wand.”

“Figure of speech. I meant you should – incoming!”

Spitfire vanished in a blur of motion at the sight of Skadi stomping towards her, one enormous hand outstretched. Clea, however, was rooted to the spot, her eyes wide. A semi-heartbeat later, Spitfire reappeared with a sigh.

“Meaning,” she said, pointedly, “you should move. Now!”

Spitfire gathered Clea in her arms as if she were a doll and then vanished again in another blur of crimson and gold, whisking the sorceress a short distance away before she could catch her breath. The two women reappeared on the far side of the street, some forty feet from where Skadi was now snatching uselessly at thin air. Clea gasped and staggered, her eyes rolling.

“Really… don’t… like… that…”

“Oh, and that interdimensional mystical teleportation whatsit you do, that’s a picnic?” Spitfire snapped. “Honestly, compared to that, high velocity maneuvers shouldn’t get your knickers in a twist.”

Clea blushed. “My knickers are fine,” she said, primly. “It’s my small intestine I’m worried about…”

Along the road, Skadi was raging. She wasn’t perturbed that Spitfire and Clea had somehow evaded her – she wasn’t particularly interested in them, in truth – but the fact that her principal target, the woman with the summer blonde hair and the laser rifle, wasn’t trying to escape seemed all the more vexing. A fraction of her enemy’s size and obviously at a major disadvantage, this pointy-eared woman was nonetheless steadfast, staring up at her gargantuan foe with an imperious air.

“I am Namora, avenging daughter of Atlantis!” she roared. “And I bow to no leviathan, of sea or land! Imperious Rex!”

Namora cast her weapon aside and then, shoulders squared and muscles corded in her arms and thighs, she leapt forward, slamming into Skadi’s midriff before the giantess could steel herself against attack. The behemoth flew backwards, unbalanced and also unaccustomed to conflict. She was learning fast, however; she’d just discovered what it meant to be bludgeoned by a mad Atlantean. It hurt.

“That lady’s got some neck,” Spitfire noted, not without a measure of admiration. Clea frowned at her.

“Doesn’t everyone have a-”

“It’s an expression! Bloody hell. You’re really not from around here, are you?”

Clea looked cross. “I already told you, I’m-”

“Yes, yes, Dark Dimension, Perpendicular Star Winds, and so forth, I know.”

“Pentacular Star Winds. Have I annoyed you in some way, Lady Jackie?”

Spitfire grimaced, then seemed abashed. “Yes. No. Sorry. Look, just… you do magic, okay? So… magic all this away, whilst I go stop innocent Londoners getting squashed by falling architecture, alright?”

Clea opened her mouth to reply but her fellow hero was already gone, darting away at high speed towards certain hot spots where collapsing buildings were endangering innocent lives. The sorceress blinked, then exhaled a murmur of frustration. Just magic all this away? Insufferable humans. They always did this! Magic didn’t work like that! There were rules! If Stephen had been here, then maybe–

Clea caught herself. She glowered. Well, no. No, Stephen be damned. Something about being back on Earth, faced with obscure occurrences she didn’t understand, it always brought the awkward girl in her scrabbling to the surface; but she wasn’t just a student any more, she wasn’t the magician’s apprentice. She didn’t need Doctor Strange, or anyone else. No, she couldn’t just magic it all away, not without incurring consequences these uninformed sapiens simply couldn’t imagine. But she could do one thing. She could make sure everyone calmed the hell down so that she could get to the bottom of this situation…

Up ahead, Skadi was on her knees, brought low by repeated blows from Namora’s furious fists – but she’d snared the Atlantean in her own clenched hand and was now squeezing the life out of her struggling enemy, even as she brought her forward to breathe an icy kiss upon her. Clea’s eyes narrowed and she thrust out both hands, her fingers weaving ancient sigils upon the air and a murmured incantation upon her lips.

Immediately the King’s Road was bathed in a curious pinkish-red light that swiftly darkened and thickened into a swirling cyclone of ruby threads. These ribbons appeared as insubstantial as gossamer whilst airborne but upon contact with living flesh – specifically that of both Skadi and Namora – they coagulated like clotting blood, entwining those snared within in pulsing bands of pure magical energy. Skadi shrieked, through anger rather than pain, and instantly loosed her grip on her prisoner in an attempt to snatch away the slithering rings that were encircling her like headless serpents, but despite her size and evident strength she couldn’t break free. Likewise Namora, furious at being thwarted but irresistibly arrested by sorcerous means; the two women strained and writhed, but in that moment they were both subdued.

Clea grunted, the exertion of maintaining these mystic restraints manifesting as an internal pressure, causing her skull to throb and her stomach muscles to ache. Stephen had always made the conjuration of the Ruby Rings of Cyttorak seem so effortless; Clea was physically weaker, and far less practiced. However, that was no excuse to surrender.

“Listen,” she hissed, her low voice carrying to all ears in the immediate vicinity on the breath of a sorcerous wind. “Watch. Let the true nature of recent events be revealed…”

Separate to the invoking of the Ruby Rings, Clea now wove a second incantation, one that was thankfully easier to generate and sustain than the first. This was a simple spell of temporal refraction, allowing all those embroiled in the melee to witness, simultaneously, the recent events that had led each of them to that juncture in time. As a group they observed one another: Clea traveling to the Earthly dimension and making the acquaintance of Jacqueline Falsworth in her Hertfordshire garden, then transporting them via a dimensional conduit to West London; The Wasp and another woman, Shuri of Wakanda, exchanging vexed words over tea at a street café before being attacked; the Atlantean, Namora, pursuing three bizarrely-clad men with tinctured skin, suggesting they were no more human than she was; and the giantess, Skadi…

Clea frowned and flinched. Her brain shivered, followed by her body. A… cloud? A confusion, a wall, a barrier preventing her from seeing… what? She grit her teeth and concentrated.

There were mountains, and forests… a valley… and Skadi, sitting, so incongruous in the way she dwarfed her surroundings, talking to… who? A smaller woman, utterly beautiful, with golden hair, clad in revealing attire of emerald and black…

Be a brave girl now, Skadi. When you wake up, all the sorrow presently darkening that precious heart of yours will seem like a distant dream…

The small woman – the witch, Clea suddenly thought – had made a deal with Jotunheim giantess. She’d woven an enchantment of her own, one more powerful than Clea might have expected – Asgardian magic – and in the next instant Skadi had been… changed. And sent to Midgard – Earth – disguised in human form…

Clea shivered again, and pulled back. The blonde witch’s power distressed her, on many levels; she couldn’t bear to be so close to it, even separated by the fluctuating screen of her temporal bubble. She felt – she knew – that if the witch had noticed her spying upon her then there would have been dire repercussions. In fact, even as she withdraw, she detected a sense of awareness on the blonde woman’s part, although curiously it wasn’t directed at her. It was as if another party was observing her at the same time, and it was this second voyeur who had unwittingly earned the witch’s attention; as if this moment was of such compelling significance that-

“That’s Amora. The Enchantress,” a small voice said, close to Clea’s ear. “The Avengers have had plenty of dealings with that prancing little madam. If she’s involved it’s no wonder everything’s gone to hell and back in a crocodile-hide purse.”

Clea glanced up to see the Wasp hovering beside her, looking slightly disheveled and still covered with a thin coating of frost, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Her temper also seemed to have abated somewhat, a recognized side-effect of the temporal charm Clea had invoked; not that it seemed to be having much effect on Namora, but that was just the nature of her species. It had long been remarked that an unprovoked Atlantean could start an argument in an empty room, and, honestly, it was true.

“The whole Asgardian angle’s familiar too,” the Wasp continued. “Thor went through the same process, once upon a time; established human identity, but Asgardian God beneath the physical illusion. Seems this girl’s got something similar going on. But, even more importantly…”

Clea had become distracted by Skadi’s recent history, and the involvement of the Enchantress, but now she returned her attention to Namora. The three men she’d been pursuing – not Atlantean, but something similar – had been armed with laser rifles. In the scene now replaying before everyone’s eyes, Namora had not. One of the men had raised his weapon and fired wildly in Namora’s general direction but had missed; that laser blast had then struck the fascia of the café where the Wasp and Shuri had been sitting. It wasn’t Namora who’d fired, it was-

“Lemurians,” the blonde Atlantean snarled, still struggling against the ruby bonds that encircled her, shackling her powerful arms to her sides. “Amphibious hybrids from the undersea realm of Lemuria, sniveling lapdogs loyal to a treacherous bitch queen named Llyra.”

Clea gaped. In the next moment Spitfire reappeared at her side, barely breathing heavily even though she’d spent the last few minutes bodily clearing the immediate area of civilians at superhuman speed.

“The Lemurian mirror!” Jackie exclaimed. “That’s why we’re here. What did you say to me back at my house, Clea? All things are connected and there’s no such thing as coincidence…?”

The rest of the scene from the recent past spooled out, with Namora disarming the Lemurian soldier who’d fired upon her – and upon the café – and then brandishing that weapon in rage as she searched in vain for the other two men, who’d momentarily evaded her. That had been the moment the Wasp had entered from stage left, fighting mad and bearing down with her sting at the ready, believing it was Namora who’d attacked her – and the same moment Clea and Spitfire had emerged from the former’s dimensional portal. Namora had accidentally discharged the weapon she, in truth, probably didn’t even know how to use, and a slight, inconspicuous human girl in neat clothes and thick-rimmed glasses had taken the brunt of the blast.

Skadi, in human form.

For a second or two, a hush settled. Skadi had ceased struggling altogether, her pale eyes wide and glistening with tears. Namora was still straining for freedom – again, something in her nature, Atlantean or otherwise, suggested that she just wasn’t the kind of person who would ever stop fighting, for any cause – but even she seemed cowed by the revelation that the fracas they’d all just been involved in had evolved from basic misunderstanding and ill fortune.

The Wasp grimaced. Clea breathed deeply, then dropped her hands, allowing the Ruby Rings to slacken and then disintegrate into pinkish-red whispers with a brief flurry of her fingertips. Spitfire raised an eyebrow and grinned.

“See?” she said. “I had every faith in you, love. Just magic it all away and-”

“For Lemuria!”

The cry seemed to erupt from nowhere, taking even Jackie with her lightning reflexes by surprise. She was the first to see the Lemurian soldier standing close by, hitherto unnoticed, the muzzle of his rifle aimed squarely at Namora’s back from a short distance away, but even as she started to move towards him his finger was tightening on the trigger release. Namora was surely a semi-heartbeat away from death…

…if not for the speed and stealth and accuracy of the Black Panther, sweeping in close and disturbing the rifle’s trajectory with the briefest touch of her outstretched claws whilst curling the crook of other arm about the Lemurian’s neck and twisting even as she shifted her weight and momentum into the jut of the man’s hip.

The rifle discharged a laser pulse that sailed over Namora’s head and exploded harmlessly against a nearby wall. She’d barely even turned at her attacker’s triumphant cry; the bolt would have detonated her skull like a ripe melon without the Panther’s interference. Shuri herself was busy turning the Lemurian inside out, instantly gauging his greater strength and physical density and using it against him however he struggled. When he attempted to kick out she merely slipped her leg behind his and put pressure against the uppermost curve of his knee joint, snapping the limb like dry kindling regardless of the powerful musculature he boasted. She then slammed two quick, lethal punches into the top of his abdomen, shattering the lower hang of his ribcage for good measure.

The Lemurian shrieked and choked, his body spasming. The Panther slid one gloved hand under his chin, an almost intimate caress of his exposed throat, and flexed her claws. A thrumming noise emerged from her chest, strangely familiar but no less disturbing for that. To the other women now gathered about her it sounded very much like a purr. Only when Shuri noticed her companions’ concerned expressions did the sound cease.

“Don’t kill him!” Namora barked. “I need him, to tell me where Llyra’s hiding.”

“Uhm… and because it’s wrong to kill people,” the Wasp added, pointedly. “Yes? Yes? Everyone with me here?”

“Agreed,” Spitfire said. Clea nodded. Namora paid them no mind.

“I’ve tracked her halfway around the world, to here,” she snarled. “Llyra burrows herself away like a sniveling brachiopod, but she can’t hide from me forever. She’s close; I can smell her. This wretch will talk, and he will give me her location.”

The Lemurian screamed and writhed. The Black Panther was leaning surreptitiously on his shattered leg. The Wasp scowled.

“Back off, Shuri,” she warned. The Panther cocked her head. Her face was completed obscured behind her black mask, but Janet knew the other woman was smiling nonetheless. To the Wakandan’s chagrin, however, her cruelty served no purpose; no measure of suffering could cause the Lemurian to betray his loyalties to either his people or his mistress, and for all her threats Namora knew that all too well. She’d already dispatched a half dozen merfolk in her pursuit of Llyra, and none of them had gifted her with the specific information she required. If only-

“The auction house,” Clea said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Heirlooms, isn’t that what you said it was called, Jackie? That’s where your Lemurian mirror came from.”

“Not Heirlooms,” a hesitant voice said. “It’s Airlume’s. Named after the owner. I… work there. Or at least I used to…”

The group looked to see a girl with tangled black hair standing close by. She was mostly naked, clutching desperately at the remains of her once neat clothes and blushing furiously at her predicament, even as she plucked her thick-rimmed glasses from the gutter where they’d fallen and placed them back on her nose. The girl, Skadi, whom Namora had accidentally struck down with a bolt from the Lemurian rifle, and who had subsequently transformed into the Jotunheim giantess, was now returned to her human form – and, aside from the damage inflicted upon her clothes, she was seemingly unharmed.

“Airlume,” Skadi said, spelling out the word for emphasis. It was the Black Panther who picked up on the significance first.

“Anagram of Lemuria,” she said, glancing at each of her companions in turn. “What, seriously, none of you got that…?”

“I can take you there if you want,” Skadi offered. Namora spluttered something foul in her own ancient language, and Skadi paled. The Wasp smiled reassuringly.

“Honey,” she said, sweetly, “I’m pretty sure that’s Atlantean for Yes, please…”

“I’m sorry, mistress. Forgive me, I beg you! We had no idea the enemy was tracking us so closely, not until-”

The Lemurian soldier’s plea was truncated by a choking scream as he was speared through the heart by the point of a coral lance. Brackish green blood gushed from the wound and the merman collapsed, clutching uselessly at his chest… but he was already dead by the time he slumped to the floor, his black eyes wide and hideously bright.

The woman who had impaled him stepped forward, tall and imperious in her olive green business suit and heels. Her aquiline features were marked with a flush of fury and her emerald eyes burned. If she could have killed this wretch at her feet more than once than she would have done so; instead she would have to be satisfied in torturing and slaying his entire family bloodline at the first opportunity. For now, however, escape was the order of the day.

Miss Airlume stood at the heart of a hall of mirrors, locked away at the rear of the auction house where she’d plied her secret business for the past few months. The antiques trade in itself was a cover; her true objective had been the distribution of these artifacts in particular, ancient Lemurian mirrors of varying sizes and descriptions, the remainder of which now decorated three out of four walls and which reflected their owner over and over again in surreal optical illusion. When the woman shifted, countless doppelgangers moved in unison, a dance of myriad shades of green in each plane of polished glass. The dead soldier at her feet was also refracted in every instance, but this was a poor substitute for the multiple executions Miss Airlume wished to inflict.

Hatred simmered in the woman’s dark green eyes, but behind this there was a still more potent emotion: fear.

Could it be true? Could the enemy she’d so long believed deceased have returned to haunt her… and now, of all times?

Airlume flourished a slender hand towards the largest mirror in the room, a ten-foot-high specimen bordered in ornate frame of blended bronze, marble and coral shell, and spoke words in ancient Lemurian. Immediately the glass darkened, revealing an extra-dimensional depth beyond; another world, dark and insidious, shifting like a dream. And there were things in the shadows. Terrible, lurking things.

The woman grimaced. This was not how she’d intended matters to develop… but that wasn’t to say this was the end. Avenging daughter of Atlantis be damned, she would notallow everything she’d planned for to be blighted!

“Suma-Ket…” she breathed. “It is time. It is time. Arise, now! Arise!”

In the dark otherworld beyond the mirror, the blackness stirred. Thickened. For faraway there came the sound of scratching, slithering, hungering… the sound of awakening. And a voice, vivid and primeval and so very, very cold.

“Llyra…”

The woman – Miss Airlume, otherwise known as Llyra of Lemuria – smiled to herself, her thin lips parting to reveal the glint of sharpened teeth and her eyes clouding black with anticipation.

“Yes, my friend,” she whispered. “It is time. Time for us to forge our alliance in blood. Time for this world, both land and sea, to tremble before us. Time for the Unforgiven Dead to rise again!”

In the immediate distance – in the real world, not the world beyond the magic mirror – the came the sounds of splintering wood and brick and the shattering of glass, followed by a series of alarmed cries. The arrival of Namora, no doubt. But she was too late. Llyra closed her eyes and shivered in something like ecstasy. She held out both hands, palms outstretched, her skin beginning to shed the illusion of its pathetic, Caucasian human paleness and to reveal its true hue of deep, olive green. She stepped towards the mirror… and through it, into the world beyond. Then, moments later in her wake, another hand emerged from the shimmering surface of the mirror, extending out into the room: a black hand, carved more from stone and oil and kelp than flesh and bone, on the end of a limb that was more tentacle than arm.

Suma-Ket, the Dark King.

He was arisen.

And, in his thrall, the long-lost spirits of the Atlantean departed, their souls forever warped by ancient, forbidden magicks – the Unforgiven Dead – surged forward to embrace an unsuspecting Earth…

NEXT: Atlantean demon zombies on the march! The Heralds in pursuit of Llyra! The madness of the magic mirrors! And… who is Suki Hashioka? Don’t miss HERALDS #3 as “The Abyss” continues…