Chapter 35-The Mad Count
Logan's tongue scraped a line of blood from his lips. Metallic, warm, electric with the pulse of battle.
But beneath the taste, something else clawed at his senses - the smell.
His world tilted. The new feline-sharp sense burned bright in his brain, weaving colors where there should be none.
Fear. Rage. Panic.
Each emotion had a scent, a flavor, a note in the orchestra of human frailty.
Nightcrawler's awe smelled like incense at a cathedral.
Storm's vigilance like ozone before a storm.
Cyclops' fear hidden, disciplined, but real -like copper wires too hot to touch.
And beneath everything... a stench so raw, so feral it nearly doubled him over.
Madness.
Count Nefaria's madness, seeping through stone walls, dripping into the air like kerosene waiting for a match.
"Got 'im," Logan muttered, voice low and guttural. He tapped his temple. "The Count's this way. And trust me, he ain't exactly smellin' like roses."
The team pressed deeper, their boots crunching over shattered rock.
Storm's winds thinned the poisonous gas behind them. Colossus bore the scars of shrapnel and flame from the traps they'd battered through. Every wall they smashed, every laser turret bent and twisted, carried them closer to the heart of the beast.
And then-
The tunnel opened.
Steel walls hummed with power. Screens flickered across the chamber like a thousand watching eyes.
And at the center, raised on a platform surrounded by glowing consoles, sat Count Nefaria.
His cape fell around him like imperial robes.
His eyes gleamed with aristocratic contempt and unhinged delight. His voice was silk and venom as it poured from the speakers:
"Ahhh, the mongrel pack arrives. You've done my work for me tearing paths where none existed, smashing walls as though the earth itself bowed before you."
He rose to his full height, gesturing with one gauntleted hand. On the screen behind him, numbers rolled down in crimson:
00:47:21... 00:47:20...
The Doomsmith Program.
Each heartbeat dragged the world closer to the abyss.
"Listen carefully, little soldiers," Nefaria purred. "I am a generous god. You want to stop my Doomsmith missiles? You can. But the system is... shall we say, entangled."
His finger hovered over a switch.
"One command halts the program. The same command ignites this base's self-destruct. You'll burn with me in Valhalla's tomb, martyrs to a world that will never know your names."
His smile widened. The madness Logan smelled earlier now howled like a bonfire.
"And that, my X-Men, is revenge. For the humiliation you dealt me last time. For every sneer, every cage you stuffed me in. If I must fall, I'll drag the world into the grave with me!"
His laughter cracked the chamber like lightning. Not the bark of a madman - but the triumphant hymn of a king convinced the world was his to ruin.
Cyclops' jaw clenched. "Spread out! Storm, Banshee - disrupt those consoles! Colossus, with me!"
But before they could move, the floor split apart with a mechanical scream.
Dozens of panels slid back, vomiting steel monstrosities into the chamber - humanoid robots clad in Nefaria's crest, arms tipped with cannons and plasma blades.
The Count spread his arms, like a maestro
commanding his orchestra.
"Dance for me, mutants. Dance for your doomed world!"
The robots surged forward in a storm of fire and steel.
Logan popped his claws with a metallic SNIKT, grin feral and eager.
"Now this," he growled, "is a party."
And the chamber dissolved into war.