POV: Adonai
"Is everyone alright?" Adonai asked absentmindedly while his eyes swept carefully across the devastated cavern, quickly examining the surviving X-men and the shattered remnants of the Morlock community gathered throughout the chamber.
The situation was as bad as he expected. Bodies still littered the tunnels in grotesque piles while blood flowed through the cracks in the stone floor like narrow rivers, and the survivors who remained alive looked like ghosts barely clinging to reality after witnessing the annihilation of everyone they had ever known.
Every single Marauder had been defeated, Adonai noted with mild surprise, although from what he could sense only two of them had actually died. He would change that soon enough.
Before he could think further about it, Artie and Leech - who had been healed perfectly now- rushed past him toward the surviving Morlocks, both boys visibly overwhelmed with relief and grief as they threw themselves into the arms of weeping survivors. Several Morlocks immediately broke down crying the moment they saw the children alive, their exhausted minds barely able to process even the smallest fragment of hope after enduring so much horror.
"Callisto, are you okay?" Leech asked in broken English while clutching tightly onto the woman's arm.
The woman in question was leaning heavily against a nearby wall for support alongside several others and was very clearly far from alright.
"I'm fine, Leech, Artie," Calisto replied with visible relief before pulling both of them into a fierce embrace. "I'm glad you're both okay."
"Look, Callisto," Leech said excitedly while pointing toward Adonai and the gigantic deerlike creature standing behind him. "Mr. Adonai's big deer healed me and he promised me he will heal anyone who needs it. Can you heal them all, Adonai?"
Calisto looked at him skeptically before her eyes shifted toward the giant deer standing behind him, and Adonai could sense the fear and uncertainty radiating from her, which was understandable in his opinion. One hardly expected to encounter a gigantic deer in the depths of underground tunnels.
"Who are you?" Calisto asked calmly despite her heavy breathing.
"My name is Adonai," he introduced himself in an even tone. "And I am with the X-Men. Like Leech said, the deer behind me has the ability to heal any kind of injury, although it can only heal three people at most simultaneously. It would be best if you gathered the most critically injured first so we can begin the healing immediately."
The Morlocks stared at him incomprehensibly as though he had begun speaking complete nonsense, which was admittedly understandable, Adonai thought dryly. One hardly expected a deer to possess healing powers in a normal world, although this was hardly a normal world to begin with.
Adonai found the reaction mildly amusing despite the circumstances, because although mutants existed openly within this world, the idea of an enormous healing deer apparently stretched beyond even their capacity for absurdity.
However, Calisto quickly forced herself out of her shock and, whether due to desperation, hope, or simply because he sounded convincing enough, she immediately began issuing orders for the most severely wounded Morlocks to be brought forward.
Adonai then mentally transmitted commands to his giant Nen beast, and the enormous creature quickly began healing three Morlocks at a time.
As the wounds slowly disappeared before their eyes, flesh mending itself seamlessly while shattered bones reformed and blood vanished as though it had never been spilled at all, the Morlocks froze completely. Shock overtook every expression around him. Some stared with mouths slightly open while others trembled violently as though their minds could not properly process what they were witnessing.
A few even instinctively stepped backward despite themselves, their eyes widening with fearful reverence. It was the sort of expression one would expect from starving peasants witnessing divine intervention descending from the heavens. For people who had spent their entire lives suffering, hiding, bleeding, and surviving in filth beneath the world above, the sight of impossible healing unfolding before them looked like a miracle.
They looked at him as though he were some divine savior or messiah, and Adonai found that strangely uncomfortable.
He turned his attention toward the X-Men, who were staring at him with equal astonishment written plainly across their faces. Only then did he remember that he had completely forgotten to mention that he had created the giant deer. In fairness to him, there had hardly been an opportunity to explain it earlier. Now that he thought about it, perhaps he could offer to heal Professor Xavier's spine as well.
He walked toward them slowly while many of the Morlocks watched him with expressions bordering on religious devotion, some even trying to reach toward him as though touching him might somehow bless them. Adonai carefully maneuvered around them all. Truthfully, he did not believe he had done anything deserving of such overwhelming reverence.
His eyes drifted toward the indigenous-looking man clad entirely in metal armor with a gun still clutched in his hand, frozen solid within a prison of ice. Bobby must have immobilized him with his powers, Adonai concluded. His gaze then shifted toward the X-Men themselves, who were still wearing their rather ridiculous costumes, although what surprised him most, despite the fact he should have expected it, was the look within their eyes.
They still looked shaken to their core, as though their minds had not fully returned to reality after what they had just witnessed. Their expressions carried the hollow instability of soldiers who had survived a battlefield massacre only for their minds to remain trapped within it long after the fighting ended. Their gazes wandered slightly unfocused at times while their bodies remained tense even in stillness, every distant sound making them subtly flinch.
They looked as though some invisible part of them had fractured permanently after witnessing human beings butchered like animals right in front of them. The younger members especially looked profoundly disturbed, their faces pale and emotionally numb in the way people became when the sheer scale of suffering exceeded what the human mind was prepared to process.
Adonai felt genuine pity for them.
They were only teenagers. Children, really. Children who had been dragged into endless violence and horror merely because of a single gene that made them different from everyone else. Seeing that trauma lingering within their eyes only strengthened Adonai's resolve to finally do something about the state of the world.
He had always considered himself a deeply self indulgent person whose priorities revolved primarily around pleasure, comfort, and avoiding unnecessary burdens. People suffering somewhere far away had never disturbed his sleep before arriving in this world, and if he remained completely honest with himself, even now he still possessed no grand heroic ideals driving his actions.
However his very nature can not allow for this to exist. He enjoyed pleasure, beauty, comfort, laughter, and peace far too much to tolerate a world overflowing with ugliness and suffering. Seeing such hollow devastation on faces that should have been lively and youthful was deeply unpleasant to him on an almost instinctive level.
It irritated him in the same way seeing something beautiful broken apart unnecessarily irritated him. He did not want to witness expressions like that ever again if he could help it.
Rogue suddenly leapt toward him and hugged him tightly enough that he could immediately tell she had been crying.
"Why do you have claw marks on your clothes?" Rogue asked with clear concern in her voice.
"A rabid dog attacked me," he replied calmly. "I'm fine, so don't worry. Is everyone here alright?"
Jean hugged him next with equal forcefulness and he returned the embrace gently, immediately noticing the faint trembling still running through her body.
Poor thing. With her psychic powers, she had probably felt every ounce of suffering the Morlocks experienced as vividly as though it had happened to her personally, he thought as he gently caressed her hair.
"We're fine," Scott answered while still staring at the giant deer healing people with visible awe. "We dealt with the Marauders here."
"Is that man one of them?" Adonai asked while pointing toward the armored man. He could not remember the man's name from the comics.
The Marauders had always been little more than third-rate villains in his opinion, and none of them had been memorable enough for him to remember aside from Sabertooth.
"Yep, the name's Greycrow," the man himself replied with a smirk despite being frozen in ice. "From the claw marks on your clothes, I'm guessing you fought Sabertooth, didn't you? I'm surprised you managed to come out alive. Though Sabertooth is one of the few people you would rather die to than escape from. He'll make your life a living hell from now on."
Logan visibly stiffened at those words and immediately glanced toward the higher tunnels as though Sabertooth might emerge at any moment.
"That will be rather difficult, I imagine," Adonai replied calmly. "He's probably burning in hell as we speak."
Utter shock spread across the area immediately. Logan looked completely stunned while even Greycrow stared at him in disbelief.
"Seriously?!" Greycrow cried out in astonishment. "You actually managed to kill Sabertooth?!"
"Oh?" Adonai replied with a hidden grin slowly spreading across his face. "It appears you cared about him somewhat. Don't worry. You'll be joining him within the next few seconds."
"Really? You're going to kill me? In front of your dear friends?" Greycrow mocked, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as he forced a crooked grin onto his face.
"You see," Adonai began calmly, "all my life, I've lived by the belief that only the present truly matters. The past can't be changed, so I never saw any reason to chain myself to it. And the future is invisible, and forever beyond anyone's grasp. So I immersed myself completely in the moment, indulging in whatever life placed before me without plans, without restraint, without concern for what came after."
"A fascinating story, kid," Greycrow said dryly. "But I fail to see why you're telling me this."
"The reason I'm telling you this," Adonai replied, "is because that belief shaped every part of who I am. I was born to Christian parents, but I could never accept their understanding of justice. My father used to tell me that evil people would suffer in hell after death, and that divine judgment would eventually punish every cruelty ever committed. But even as a child, I kept asking myself the same question over and over again. What comfort is there in punishment that happens somewhere beyond reach, after everything is already over? What meaning does justice hold if the victims can never witness it for themselves?
"Where is the justice in suffering delayed to some distant eternity? To me, justice only has value if it exists here, in this world, in the present where people can see it with their own eyes. Evil should answer for itself in the same reality where it was committed. Otherwise the punishment means nothing."
Greycrow's smirk faded at once as realization spread across his face, and around him the surviving Marauders stiffened in visible alarm. Even the X-Men looked toward Adonai with growing unease as they sensed the shift in his tone.
Adonai slowly raised one hand. "With this treasure, I summon the Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga."
The cavern trembled violently. A monstrous wheel rotated behind him with a metallic scream that reverberated through the stone itself, and from the shadows emerged the towering abomination, its grotesque smile carved permanently into its face like the expression of a god that had forgotten mercy long ago.
Several Morlocks recoiled in terror. Even the X-Men stared at the creature uneasily.
Adonai calmly pointed toward Archlight's mutilated body lying several meters away, screaming weakly through blood and agony.
"Bring her to me."
Mahoraga obeyed instantly. The creature grabbed Archlight by what remained of her torso and dragged her across the cavern floor while she shrieked in pain and terror.
"Adonai, what are you doing?" Storm asked, unable to hide the worry in her voice.
"When I fought Sabretooth," Adonai said calmly as he walked toward the center of the cavern, "he revealed something interesting. He told me this massacre was orchestrated by a single individual. A mutant geneticist called Mister Sinister. According to him, Sinister wanted the Morlocks exterminated, and he commissioned the Marauders to carry out his will."
"That's bullshit!" Greycrow shouted immediately, panic breaking through his voice. "Sabretooth would never tell you that!"
"You would be surprised what people are willing to say when survival becomes uncertain," Adonai said as he smiled faintly. "He also revealed another detail I found particularly important. Mister Sinister possesses advanced cloning technology. So I started thinking. Even if all of you die tonight, what stops him from digging up your corpses tomorrow, extracting your DNA, and simply recreating you to continue doing his work over and over again?"
Silence spread throughout the cavern. The surviving Morlocks stared in horror while several X-Men visibly tensed at the implication.
Mahoraga dropped Archlight before Adonai's feet.
The reason Adonai was even bothering with this entire theatrical display at all was because, now that he had finally decided to do something about the miserable state of the world, he intended to do it properly. He had no intention of leaving loose ends behind simply because dealing with them was inconvenient.
Killing the Marauders might not amount to much in the grand scheme of things, and their deaths alone would hardly change the world, yet this incident had confirmed something important to him.
There were people like Sinister lurking in the shadows whose existence revolved entirely around ruining the lives of others for amusement, obsession, or ambition. Men like that spread suffering endlessly simply because nobody removed them quickly enough.
If Adonai was truly going to involve himself in the affairs of this insane world from now on, then he intended to reduce the number of pieces such lunatics possessed as much as possible before the game even properly began.
"What are you going to do to me?" Archlight screamed, trembling violently as blood pooled beneath her. "You fucking freak!"
Adonai reached into his pocket, removed a cigarette, and lit it calmly while staring down at her.
"I'm tying up loose ends," he said coldly. "The only way to make sure Mister Sinister can't clone you… is to leave him nothing to clone."
Jean's eyes widened in horror. "You're going to burn her alive?"
"That's the only way to guarantee this cycle ends permanently," Adonai replied without hesitation.
He flicked the lighter toward Archlight. The small flame spun through the air.
Then suddenly it stopped. The lighter froze midair as though caught by invisible fingers before slowly rising upward toward the ceiling.
"Well spoken," a deep voice declared from above, aged, commanding, and impossibly composed. "Yet such decisions should never fall upon the shoulders of children."
Everyone looked upward. Floating above the cavern floor stood a tall imposing man clad in crimson and purple armor, his heavy cloak flowing behind him like the banner of a conquering king. Upon his head rested the iconic helmet recognized even by those unfamiliar with mutant affairs - Erik Lehnsherr.
Behind him stood several mutants. Among them was a blue-skinned woman with cold yellow eyes, alongside others Adonai did not recognize.
Magneto surveyed the ruined cavern in silence for several moments. His gaze moved across the dead Morlocks, the blood staining the tunnels, the terrified survivors huddled together like abandoned animals, and finally toward the mutilated bodies scattered across the battlefield.
"What a tragedy," Magneto said quietly, though every word carried effortlessly through the cavern. "What an utterly shameful tragedy that children are forced to stand amidst mountains of corpses and debate the mechanics of execution because the world above refuses to acknowledge their humanity."
His eyes settled briefly on Adonai. "Young man, I understand your anger more than you realize. I understand the desire to ensure evil never rises again. I understand the instinct to erase every possible threat before it can return. Those thoughts are born only in people who have witnessed the true face of cruelty."
Magneto slowly turned toward the Morlocks. "And what greater evidence of humanity's cruelty exists than this place? Look around you carefully. Look at where these people were forced to live. Hidden underground like diseased animals because the world above could not tolerate the sight of them. And why? Was it because they committed crimes? Was it because they harmed others? No!
"You were forced into these tunnels because humanity looked upon your faces and decided you no longer qualified as human beings deserving dignity. They saw powers they did not understand, appearances they could not tolerate, and differences that offended their fragile sense of normalcy. So they pushed you underground where they would not have to acknowledge your existence any longer.
"They will tolerate monsters so long as those monsters resemble them," Magneto said bitterly. "They will praise murderers, dictators, and criminals provided they wear human faces. Yet a child born with scales or strange eyes is immediately condemned as unnatural. Society rejects them before they are even given the opportunity to prove who they are. And tonight, this massacre occurred because monsters like Mr. Sinister understood a truth that humanity refuses to admit openly. No one was coming to save you. No government cared whether you lived or died. No human authority would mourn your suffering enough to prevent it."
His eyes shifted toward the X-Men. "And this is the burden placed upon young mutants like these children standing before me. They are forced to become soldiers, executioners, and judges because the world leaves them no alternative. They are forced to stain their hands with blood because civilized society has already abandoned them long before they ever raised a fist in anger.
"And understand this clearly, mutants are still largely hidden from the world. Most humans don't yet know how many of us exist. They don't yet understand what is emerging among them. If this is how society treats mutants before our existence even becomes public knowledge, imagine what awaits us once humanity fully realizes that a new species walks beside them. They will fear us. Fear will become hatred, hatred will become violence, and violence will become extermination. Humanity always destroys what it fears once fear grows large enough."
Scott stepped forward slightly. "That doesn't mean coexistence is impossible."
Magneto looked toward her with something almost resembling pity.
"You possess admirable hope, child," he said. "I once wished to believe the same thing. I once hoped humanity would eventually outgrow its fear. Yet history teaches the same lesson repeatedly. Every civilization destroys what it cannot control. Every society eventually turns upon those it deems different enough to threaten the comfort of the majority.
And because of that, tragedies like this are inevitable so long as mutants continue begging humanity for acceptance instead of securing their own future with their own strength. Humanity will always fear us. And why would not? We are living proof that humanity is no longer the final stage of evolution. We are the future inheritors of this earth whether mankind accepts it peacefully or violently."
Several Morlocks stared at him with growing fascination, much to the x-men's worry.
"You have spent your entire lives begging for scraps of tolerance from people who already decided you are monsters. You hide underground hoping obedience will earn acceptance someday, yet obedience only teaches oppressors that they may continue abusing you without consequence."
Magneto extended one hand dramatically toward the survivors. "I offer you something different. I offer you dignity. I offer you strength. I offer you a future where mutants no longer kneel before a species that fears them for existing."
His cape billowed behind him.
"Join me, and you will never again suffer alone in forgotten tunnels while the world pretends your lives do not matter. Join me, and mutants will stand together as one people instead of isolated individuals waiting helplessly for extermination. Join me, and we will build a future where no child is forced to watch their family butchered simply because they were born different."
Adonai hated to admit it, but the man was undeniably a gifted orator who understood exactly which words could ignite the fire buried within desperate people. He could see the Morlocks staring at Magneto with exhausted hope and quiet desperation, searching for someone capable of giving meaning to their suffering and offering an answer to the miserable reality of their existence.
In times like these, a man who appeared certain of himself and spoke as though he possessed a plan for the future became dangerously attractive to people who had long since lost faith in the world.
The most irritating part was that Magneto was not entirely wrong either. The massacre they had just witnessed stood as proof enough that mutants truly were hunted, feared, and brutalized simply for existing. Any mutant who survived long enough would inevitably come to understand why a man like Magneto had been created.
But the way he framed everything deeply bothered Adonai.
Every word Magneto spoke carried the mentality of a man who had divided the world permanently into two irreconcilable sides, mutants and humans, victims and oppressors, us and them. It was the mindset of someone whose trauma had calcified into the very foundation of his worldview.
After surviving genocide once, Magneto had come to see all fear as the beginning of extermination and every act of hatred as proof that coexistence itself was ultimately impossible. To him, compromise was little more than naive self-deception that delayed the inevitable conflict between species.
Adonai could understand why he became that way. A man who spent his childhood watching people marched into camps and slaughtered like animals would inevitably begin viewing the world through the lens of survival above all else. The problem was that trauma had long since stopped being merely something Magneto suffered from and had instead become the lens through which he interpreted reality itself. Every event, every conflict, every act of cruelty only reinforced the belief that mutants and humans could never truly share the same world peacefully.
And that mentality, Adonai thought with irritation, guaranteed endless conflict no matter how justified its origins might have been.
Sure, Adonai was nothing like the idealistic heroes this world seemed so determined to produce endlessly. Heroes, at their core, existed to embody something greater than themselves. They cling stubbornly to ideals and moral principles while sacrificing pieces of themselves for strangers who would rarely appreciate the cost of such devotion.
From his perspective, most heroes lived fundamentally miserable existences that revolved entirely around denying their own desires for the sake of abstract principles that the world rarely rewarded. There was something deeply self-destructive about the way heroes constantly forced themselves to carry the burdens of others while pretending martyrdom was in any way noble.
Frankly, Adonai considered that mentality borderline insane. Life was already cruel and absurd enough without voluntarily turning oneself into a martyr for society's endless problems.
He preferred comfort - things that made existence worth enduring.
But despite his deeply self indulgent nature, Adonai had never become cynical enough to believe Magneto's worldview represented the inevitable truth of the world either. He understood perfectly well why Erik Lensherr believed humanity and mutants could never coexist peacefully after everything he had suffered, but understanding pain did not magically transform terrible ideas into correct ones.
Magneto's world, if brought to reality, would be a deeply ugly one. Because in the end, Magneto's dream still condemned everyone to endless war.
And Adonai hated war. War destroyed comfort. War destroyed beauty.
"Ironic," Adonai said softly while a dark chuckle escaped him, "that you speak so passionately about mutant suffering while manipulating desperate people at their absolute lowest for your own purposes. I wonder where you were while the Morlocks spent years rotting beneath this city like abandoned animals. Why didn't you come earlier? A great deal of suffering could've been prevented."
Magneto's expression darkened slightly, though his voice remained calm and controlled.
"You don't agree with my methods," Magneto observed quietly.
"No," Adonai replied immediately. "I don't."
The Master of Magnetism studied him carefully.
"Young man," Magneto said with growing intensity. "You have witnessed their suffering yourself. Surely even you can understand that this world will never willingly accept our kind."
Adonai listened calmly before sighing softly.
"The problem with people like you," he said slowly, "is that you view the world entirely through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a war between opposing sides until eventually you can't imagine human beings as anything except enemies divided by species, ideology, race, or power."
Magneto's eyes narrowed slightly. "And am I wrong?"
"Yes," Adonai answered bluntly. "Because your solution merely recreates the exact same cycle you claim to hate. Your answer revolves around establishing mutant supremacy through fear and violence. Humanity fears mutants, so you respond by giving them even more reasons to fear mutants. You despise persecution, yet you constantly divide the world further into categories of superior and inferior people. Frankly, it sounds exhausting."
"You speak from naïveté," Magneto said coldly. "Humans have spent centuries proving what they truly are. They fear anything different from themselves, and eventually fear always becomes violence. Mutants will either rule this world or perish beneath it."
"Your endless fascination with domination is very disturbing," Adonai sighed softly. "Humans against mutants… Mutants against humans… One group crushing another while convincing themselves they are morally justified because they suffered first."
Magneto's eyes narrowed dangerously. "And what would you suggest instead?" he demanded. "More Xavier nonsense about peaceful coexistence while children are butchered in tunnels?"
"I would create a world where people actually enjoy living." Adonai looked toward the wounded Morlocks again while the healing light continued illuminating the cavern softly. "These people needed warmth. They needed music and good food and laughter and lovers and beautiful homes. They needed ordinary happiness long before they needed revolution or martyrdom. Any philosophy incapable of giving people that is fundamentally worthless to me."
"And how exactly do you intend to create this utopia of yours?" Magneto asked with visible curiosity.
"I don't know," Adonai answered truthfully without the slightest hesitation.
The admission seemed to genuinely surprise them.
The truth was that Adonai had absolutely no concrete idea how he intended to change the world or improve it in any meaningful, large-scale way. He only knew one thing with certainty. Xavier's ideology was far too passive while Magneto's was far too extreme. One path led to endless martyrdom while the other led to endless war, and neither left much room for the things Adonai actually valued in life.
There would be no peace beneath Magneto's world. No genuine beauty. People would spend their lives preparing for the next conflict, consumed by resentment and survival. Even pleasure itself would eventually become hollow in such an existence.
And Xavier's path irritated him almost as much for entirely different reasons. Adonai could not stand the idea of endlessly enduring ugliness while waiting for morally enlightened progress that might never arrive. There was something profoundly miserable about sacrificing one's happiness for ideals that the world itself consistently rejected.
So the question was this: what exactly should he do?
AN: And with that, the Mutant Massacre arc comes to an end. It ended in a rather nihilistic manner, which isn't what the story is ultimately meant to be. The plan is for the story to become much more lighthearted once we reach the timeskip and start interacting with the outside world more.
Anyway, the chapter got a bit too preachy toward the end there, but it was necessary for Adonai to establish some kind of stance or ideology against Magneto so that he can finally begin his real journey.
Comments and likes are always appreciated and welcome. Criticism and insults are welcome too; after all, if you're going to call me an idiot, you might as well do it where I can read it. That way I'll know what I'm doing wrong, what I'm doing right, and hopefully improve rather than continuing to make the same mistakes in blissful ignorance.