---

You know, regardless of all my years of experience in this big time superhero game, it never ceases to amaze me just how quickly a situation can go from bad to really, really, really bad. Case in point: finding myself unwittingly transported to another dimension whilst attempting to prevent a kidnapping – that’s the bad in this scenario – and then being dragged inexorably towards a second portal inside that other dimension, a shimmering rhombus-shaped gateway that’s currently spewing darkness and dread. That, as if you needed me to elaborate, is the really, really, really bad.

Still, let’s look on the bright side… things can only get better. Right?

Saliyah Achebe, First Lady of the African nation of Delqitar, is still screaming. I can’t blame her. She’s just about to vanish into the aforementioned portal, already smothered by darkness, and in this alien environment – which lacks, among other things, gravity and walls – my web-slinging abilities are rendered void. All any of us can do is be sucked along helplessly in her wake – and by all of us I mean my two companions, the mutant hero Nightcrawler and the decidedly un-heroic villain known as Sidewinder. A pair of teleporters, trapped in the very dimension they use to teleport. Man, can I pick them or can I –

Whoomp!

We pass through the rhombus gate in a pack, Saliyah among us, as time and space suddenly compress in a way I couldn’t even begin to describe or understand. I’m aware of a piercing chill, and a drastic escalation in the sense of foreboding I’d been experiencing, and which was a real white-knuckler to begin with. Glancing to my right I can just about discern Nightcrawler’s face in the oily gloom, and I see that he’s sharing my apprehension – and that, beyond him, Saliyah’s expression is one of pure terror. I turn, aware that I had Sidewinder snared in a web before we were engulfed; now, however, he’s managed to free himself with those claw gauntlets of his. Slippery little cuss. When our flight is abruptly halted by impact against a hard surface, followed instantly by a flare of sickly green light, I’m momentarily stunned. Sidewinder, seemingly protected by his cloak, is not. Before I can react he’s up and running. Fortunately he isn’t getting very far.

Our new location resembles a hallway, narrow but incredibly long and with walls so tall and sheer that any ceiling that might exist overhead is lost in the vanishing point. These walls are made of something between marble and flesh. The green light is emanating from regular apertures the shape and general form of eye-slits. Sidewinder is sprinting away from us but without gaining any distance, as if he’s running along a conveyor belt that’s working against him at his exact speed. But, of course, the floor beneath our feet isn’t moving. I sigh and extend an arm.

“Stop embarrassing yourself, snakeskin!” I snap, snagging him with a web-line and yanking him backwards. As I said: slippery little cuss. He twists in midair and launches himself at me with a hiss, but he’s no match for me. I duck beneath his outstretched claws and slam a punch into his gut as he flies over my head, then spin and tag him with a second web-thread to arrest his flight. I whirl him in a half-circle then release him, and he careens backwards into the nearest wall. A couple of the green eye-lights blink, as if flinching. I feel a little nauseous.

Sidewinder grunts and scrambles to his feet once more, his cloak swirling. I give him points for persistence, especially as taking away his ability to teleport has basically stripped him of his key power, but to be honest I’m thinking he’s just a distraction in our present predicament. Therefore I’m more than happy to see Nightcrawler dive in from one side whilst I flip to the other, causing Sidewinder to freeze in momentary confusion; in that instant, Nightcrawler whips out a leg and sweeps our serpentine foe’s feet from underneath him whilst I execute a flying kick that connects with the side of his head as he tumbles, sending him skittering along the hall floor, face-first, limbs akimbo.

“Stop it! Stop! You thugs!”

Nightcrawler and I both turn at the sound of this cry, a woman’s voice heavy with accent. Saliyah Achebe is standing before us, wringing her hands. Her cheeks are wet with tears and fear remains bright in her eyes, but she’s also quite obviously enraged. Nightcrawler spreads his arms and shrugs.

“What did we do? He’s a villain, yes?”

I groan. “Wait,” I say. “Remember what he was trying to tell us before we got dumped here? That this was a rescue rather than a kidnapping…?”

Saliyah pushes past us and rushes to crouch beside Sidewinder. When she glances back over her shoulder at us she’s weeping freely once more. “I did hire this man,” she whispers, in eloquent English. “To save me. My husband is a politician and soldier, shaped by a land that was cursed with civil war for over a decade before he was elected to office and my country achieved independence. He is a survivor – but with that fortitude comes a capacity for much cruelty. Cruelty often directed towards me. My country currently knows freedom, but I do not. I wanted a new life… but just to walk away would have made my husband angry. He would have seen me killed for my betrayal. So there was just one option available to me…”

“Arrange a fake kidnapping and escape,” Nightcrawler murmurs. “But not, I’d guess, to another dimension. A fly in your soup, ja?”

I grimace beneath my mask. “You think you can just disappear? Not be recognised?”

Saliyah smiles, bitterly. “Refugees from my country, and other nations, vanish between the cracks in your America every day. And what of your own citizens, categorized as missing persons? Do you remember their faces? I would need to be careful for a few weeks, with my photograph in your newspapers and on television, but I would soon be forgotten, just as they are.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, I think it is. In your world, with your masks and dramatic names, you are immortalized; ordinary people, real people, we simply fade to grey in your shadow…”

As Saliyah speaks my spider-sense begins to tingle, a flaring of nerve-endings at the base of my skull and down my spine. Suddenly I become aware that the hallway is darkening all about us, the eye-slits in the walls shrivelling and allowing deep shadows to cluster. And in those shadows, shapes are beginning to form… and grow… and move. I exchange glances with Nightcrawler, and see that he’s also noticed the alteration.

“Something comes,” he says, softly. “Something terrible.”

“Now, now, Kurt… is that any way to talk about an old girlfriend?”

Nightcrawler and I both whirl, swift enough to witness the final moment of her arrival – a woman clad in steel and ivory and a winter-white cloak, most of her face in shadow beneath a horned helm, save for an amused, rosebud smile. She’s wielding the biggest, most impressive looking sword I’ve ever seen – and, dude, I’ve met Red Sonja. Judging by the broad smile that’s just broken out on my furry friend’s face this is evidently an acquaintance of his. Or, you know, he could just be pleased to meet her…

Nightcrawler winks at me, then bows with a flourish. “Spider-Man, allow me introduce the lovely Magik, Sorceress Supreme and custodian of the Otherplace of Limbo.”

I met a Magik once, a cute blonde girl with the New Mutants. Either she’s all grown up or this is someone new. Unfortunately there’s no time to ask questions. All around us the shadows have become three-dimensional silhouettes, each possessing vague human features – eyes and mouths twisted in some silent horror, and obscured as if glimpsed in the surface of some dark mirror – and these creatures are shambling forward with alarming speed. I react quickly, unleashing spools of webbing, whilst Nightcrawler – no slouch himself – launches into an array of acrobatics culminating in a flurry of kicks. However, neither these blows nor my webbing achieves the desired effect, as our intended targets surge through our defences like smoke. They really are shadows come to life, it seems – but they aren’t altogether incorporeal. One of them lashes out at me, raking black claws down my chest, and there’s nothing insubstantial about the pain I feel… or the sensations of loneliness, abandonment and fear that suddenly flood me like poison. I glimpse images of wretchedness: a girl swallowing pills, an elderly man balancing on the edge of a bridge, a knife blade, a speeding train, the barrel of a gun…

“Beware!” Magik commands, immediately adopting the battle stance of a seasoned warrior and brandishing her sword above her head. “These are Shade-Thralls, the resident evil of The Halls of Fear. They are the twisted souls of those who have died choking upon their own misery, urged on by His voice – and here, in their pit, their touch is deadly!”

Now… she tells me…

I stagger, my body turning cold and numb, but then Magik places a gloved palm over my wound and mutters beneath her breath in a strange, alien language. I hear the hiss of my skin puckering beneath the cloth of my costume, and then I glimpse a flicker of runic images dancing briefly upon the air. A moment later my pain and dread subside. When the horned woman removes her hand and I glance down I see that the damage inflicted upon me has already all but faded.

“Be more careful,” Magik commands. “If the infection is allowed to take hold I’ll be unable to heal you through sorcery. The same goes for you, Kurt – so curb your natural inclination for recklessness!”

Nightcrawler flips above our heads, tail curled and golden eyes ablaze with what I can only describe as a thoroughly inappropriate delight. “Yes, ma’am!” he calls, leaping towards a stricken Shaliyah and gathering her in his arms. “I promise they won’t lay a hand on me – one of my gifts is the ability to pass through shadows unnoticed, remember?”

Magik doesn’t bother to answer, turning instead upon the Shade-Thralls and immediately launching an attack. She ducks beneath one savage thrust of claws then sweeps the glowing blade of her sword in a wide arc, cleaving through the shifting bodies of a half dozen enemies at once. The blade flares with a brilliant white, crackling with sorcerous energy, and the Thralls scatter in all directions, leaking lifeforce in the form of blobs of oily black floating in the air. All around us our sinister environment – The Halls of Fear – groan and pulse as if in sympathy, the green eye-slits in the walls twitching. Magik then pushes forward, spinning one way and then the other, her cloak flashing about her armoured legs and hips as she gathers momentum. She stabs and sweeps with her enchanted blade, devastating the opposing ranks, until she is all but consumed in a cloud of glistening black ether-blood, with the light emanating from her weapon a bolt of lightning splitting the darkness.

“Light is the key!” I hear her cry as she decapitates two shadow-beasts with a single strike. “Purity and hope in the form of brightness. It’s the only thing they can’t defend against!”

“Well, that’s great,” I mutter, scampering sideways as four Thralls advance upon me, claws outstretched. “I mean, unless anyone has a handy-dandy holy torch, light’s in short supply around here. How about pithy witticisms? Those I’ve got plenty of…”

I hear a scream and turn to see Sidewinder a few feet away, under attack from a clot of wraiths. None of them seem to have infected him with their psycho-venom yet, but it’s only a matter of time – unless, of course, a certain wall-crawler jumps to the rescue. At least I’m good for something. I snag the villain’s ankles with a web-thread and yank him clear just as one of the Thralls slashes out at his masked face. Sidewinder emits a squeal as he slithers along the hall on his back, arms flailing. I grab him by the scruff of his neck and then leap as more Thralls attack, climbing the nearest wall. The texture is damp and spongy beneath my touch. Ick. Again I feel nauseous. Why can’t extraterrestrial dimensions just be… nice?

Across from me Nightcrawler has deposited Saliyah clear of immediate danger and is now attempting to steer clear of the Thralls whilst landing a few telling blows of his own. I’ve teamed up with Kurt Wagner before and I like him immensely – not to be narcissistic, but his energy and wry humour, at odds with a deep sense of melancholy that he tried to keep hidden, well… it reminds me of me. Add in the rather goofy fighting style that stems from elasticised muscles and instinctive dexterity and we could be brothers. Except for the fact he’s, you know, blue. A Thrall grabs his leg as I watch and then lunges forward, its shadow face suddenly splintered with teeth. Leaving Sidewinder webbed to the icky wall I join the fray, hauling Nightcrawler free at the last moment but then being consumed by shadow-smoke myself; fortunately Kurt snaps out an arm, grabs me about the wrist with a three-fingered hand, and yanks me clear in turn. Then, alongside us, Magik cleaves a gap between the Thrall legion to allow us to escape the throng, collecting both Sidewinder and Saliyah along the way. Magik’s Soulsword carves a series of spirals in the air, again spilling a flicker of runes, and – finally – the Shade-Thralls begin to fall back, merging once more into a formless tide of darkness.

“They’re not beaten, are they?” I ask. “I mean, that’d be too much to ask, right?”

Magik’s expression beneath her cowled helm is grim. “Merely recuperating. Reconstituting. And there can be no end to the eternal loneliness that plagues them; driven by a need to destroy, they’ll be on the attack once more in minutes, stronger than before.”

“Well, gee. I bet you’re the life and soul of all your wizard parties, aren’t you?”

“Actually I am,” she purrs, now with a flash of a smile.

“It’s true,” Nightcrawler concurs. “You should see what she can pull out of a hat.”

“I must say, you do seem rather hands-on for a Supreme Sorceress. Aren’t you supposed to be all stuffy and enigmatic?”

“That’s just Stephen Strange,” Magik murmurs. “Although I’ve heard tell he can loosen up a little after a glass or two of – there! There it is!”

She points the tip of her sword to a particular aperture in the wall, one that appears no different to any other. I glance back uneasily at the shadows that are once again gathering behind us. “There what is?”

“The threshold. The way back to Kurt’s Linkspace dimension, and to Earth beyond.” Magik grimaces. “Because you’ve passed through the Linkspace to get here, the energies of that realm prevent me from simply transporting you to Limbo via a stepping disc – you have to go back the way you came.”

Nightcrawler hisses. “I’ve been trying to teleport us out since we arrived. I can’t - ”

“It’ll need both of you, working together.”

I shrug. “Me? What do I - ”

“Not you,” Magik snaps, casting me a withering glance. “Him.” She points to Sidewinder. The other teleporter. “And you’d better do it now,” she says, icily, “because it’s only a matter of time before He - ”

The Halls of Fear are suddenly shaken by a terrible noise, a wail that’s somewhere between a scream and a sob of misery, and perhaps the rattling exhalation of a dying breath. We all turn quickly, staring down the unearthly corridor – past the Shade-Thralls – to where a second darkness is looming, this one blacker and colder and infinitely more terrifying…

I see an approximation of a head, dominated by bulging eyes like those of an insect, and crusted not with a lower jaw but with a swarming mass of tentacles that slither and slap at one another in blind starvation. A wave of absolute dread washes over me and I stagger and whimper. I’m not alone. Even Magik gasps with a tiny cry, her lower lip trembling and her grip on the hilt of her Soulsword almost faltering.

“Is that Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean?” I croak.

“No.”

“Then I don’t want to know what it is. Really. I don’t. At all.”

“I do,” Nightcrawler says. I’d glare at him if I could turn my head.

“This is the beast that rules The Halls of Fear, the voice that dragged this poor souls to their fate,” Magik whispers. “It’s name translates best as He Who Dwells In Darkness.”

“Can we fight it?”

Magik stares on, solemnly. “Some have,” she murmurs. “But the essence of The Dweller is that he gains his strength from despair and misery: fear of abandonment and of failure, self-loathing, desolation… he feeds on the emotional distress of humans and the inhabitants of countless other realities, this pocket realm bleeding victims like a parasite. These Shade-Thralls are the twisted, enslaved souls of the lost, those who died alone and in sorrow. Those unfortunates who have fallen through the cracks of the world…”

I glance across at Saliyah, and can’t help but think of her earlier words. “Then maybe we should get out of here as quickly as possible,” I say, quietly. “Because if there’s one thing there’s a lot of on Earth in this day and age it’s misery.”

The Dweller-in-Darkness advances along the corridor at a slow but inexorable pace, crawling and slithering, its beard of tentacles licking at the flanking walls, increasing in size as it approaches. Magik hauls Sidewinder to his feet by his cloak and presses the point of her glowing blade to his throat. “Make this work,” she snarls, “else I’ll not rest until I’ve scavenged your immortal soul upon your death and cast it beyond the rim of Limbo into the fire pits of Hell!”

Sidewinder sniffs. “Well, since you asked so nicely…”

The villain clasps hands with Nightcrawler, even though he’s aghast that the blue-skinned mutant only has three fingers, and the two of them gather Saliyah and myself close under Magik’s direction. Then, as she weaves her sorcery and conjures a portal of incandescent white – a stepping disk – for her own imminent use, she instructs both Sidewinder and Nightcrawler to concentrate on opening their own gateway so that we all might teleport back to the Linkspace. They do as they’re bidden, wordlessly. Even I’m morbidly quiet, and that hardly ever happens. I guess having a tentacle-faced, fear-sucking behemoth bearing down on you will have that effect.

The darkness seethes all around us. I see Magik pass through her stepping disk with one final, despairing glance back in our direction, and even beneath the shadow of her horned helm I recognise the adoration in her expression, her fondness for Kurt Wagner. And then, as a sudden chill thickens about us once more –

Whoomp!

With a physical and spiritual wrench that leaves each of us breathless we’re ejected back into the eerie serenity of the Linkspace, surrounded on all sides by a whorl of glitter-edged shapes of fluid form. For a moment or two we’re united in our elation – but then we hear a hollow shriek in our wake, and when we glance back we see a shimmering, greenish-black hole in the fabric of this dimension, the threshold between worlds, and glimpse sight of He Who Dwells In Darkness and his Shade-Thralls scrabbling and snarling in the gloom like malevolent ghouls in the night. They seem trapped in their own world – but for how long?

“Sidewinder!” Nightcrawler suddenly snaps. “Don’t you - ”

But it’s too late. I turn just in time to see the villain wrap himself in his cloak and vanish in a twist of crimson and green. Nightcrawler gnashes his sharpened teeth in frustration.

“He’s escaped back to Earth!”

“Yeah, well, them’s the breaks,” I say. “He’ll get his soon enough. Villains always do. For now, you think you can get us out of here?”

Kurt Wagner sighs, then smiles. He can’t help it. Soulful and introspective, but at the same time he’s just one of life’s natural good guys. I can see why Magik loves him, but I wonder… does he realise?

“It would be my pleasure, my webbed friend,” he says, patting me on the back. “Hold on tight…”