X-Trees| Volume One: Welcome Home

Prologue

Summary:  A mysterious figure arrives at the Deadwood - the final resting place of deceased X-Trees. Shortly after, Archangel falls from the sky, seeming to work with the figure to dig up one of the graves...

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The Deadwoods. An ancient forest at the edge of the world. Where withered trees rattle off the names of the deceased, and poisonous miasma leeches from the spoiled ground. It is a forsaken and godless place where no Tree ought to be.

A long, long time ago, it was a burial site, used for the fallen members of the X-Trees, a team of Variants led by Professor Cypress Xavier.

But over time, nature here has dissolved into entropy and madness. The Deadwoods, no longer a memorial to the heroes of the living, but a twisted nightmare-scape of gravestones and creeping death as far as the eye can see. No sunlight shines here. It is the dark that prevails, and only those keen to fellowship with the dark, may find themselves among the withered.

A lone figure stands at the foot of a grave, his canopy and face obscured by a large hood. His desire for anonymity is unnecessary in the Deadwood, as the dead have not the mouths to betray the living. A few rogue leaves fall from out of his hood. They are an unmistakable black, like that of truest night, and, despite the lack of light, they shimmer like oil slicks. He walks the grove, an unsavory lightness in his gait, an eased, unaffected manner in how he carries himself. He doesn't seem to mind the dead; rather, he appreciates their silence.

He waits. The miasma grows thicker, angrier, swarms the figure like angry hornets. Prodding him with fingers, urgent, eager, for his removal. The figure does not budge. He stays. He strolls. He breathes in poison, and survives.

His presence unsettles the Deadwood itself.

It is near afternoon, when his guest arrives. A low hiss cuts through the air, the ground rumbles. Overhead, a shadow dips in front of the clouds. It barrels toward the ground, and the sound becomes piercing. As he plummets, he comes into focus and there is no mistaking him: the harsh outlines of skeletal branches; the glint off patchwork metal; the bruised bark, and most importantly, the absent look in his eyes. Where once was housed empathy and compassion, are now abysses where only anger and hate reside.

They say Walnut Worthington III used to be an angel before the figure in the grove had a hand in designing his fall.

"Have a nice flight?" the figure asks when Walnut lands, dirt and leaves kicked up into a whirlwind around the angel's roots. He asks because he is attuned to pleasantries, and the polite contrivances Tree Society thrusts on its members. He does not care however, nor desire a real answer. He is thankful when Walnut provides a grunt and nothing wordier.

He strolls through the rows of graves, marveling at the sheer volume.

When last he was here, there were barely a dozen. Now, because of the genetically engineered Petrify Fungus he unleashed on the world three years ago, there were hundreds. Mossy gravestones advertising names he recognizes, and others, less so, barely discernible from the others: Bobby Drake, the Freezetree. Emma Fir. Hemlocke.

Henry McCoy and Jean Redwood. Of these, he laments the latter, for Jean had proved a most exquisite test-subject. Never giving up that help would come, always trying to take him down herself, never screaming, despite the amount of liquid fire he injected into her veins. Even at the end, in the thralls of his fungus, she held her own, protecting those of the X-Trees left, while the virus thickened her sap and turned her bark to stone.