The sky was dark and the moon was covered up by the shadow of the Earth. The stars were barely visible due to the light pollution. Weak, ancient lamp posts were scattered along the street, and some of them even worked despite years of being rock-throwing target practice.

It didn’t matter to Rex. He had his own light.

The ball of fire hovering before him, maintaining a six foot distance in front of him and acting like a floating lantern, always lighting the way. The firelight burned brightly and even removed a tinge of the chill of the air. It was deeply welcomed on this night above all other nights.

Dark forces were brewing. Rex had been tipped off by his priest, Father Lorenzo, after the father had taken a confession mere hours beforehand.

Rex had set out at once, with no plan of action, merely knowing the Lord would guide him to where he needed to go.

His feet still felt the itch to keep walking north, so Rex did. Meanwhile he counted down the minutes to when Sam would arrive. Rex had called him as soon as he’d learned of the oncoming trouble, but he hadn’t been able to tell him where he was going, only where he was. Rex didn’t know where he was going, only that he’d prayed to be led to where the dark ritual was being held.

He only hoped that he and Sam could make it in time to stop it.

His sponsor set this up. The man was a mystic. Still Sam trusted the man, it might come back to bite him later but he had fought side by side with Rex and came out from the fight untouched... by the fire at least and seeing as Rex controlled the flames it meant he was an ally for now.

”Mind turning down the light?” Sam asked finding Rex in the darkness easy enough. Even without his one eye the heat the flame gave off made it feel like he was staring at the sun. The heat the thing gave off made him turn down his thermal vision. Relying more on his training to fight and track with little light and without the use of most of his powers.

”You usually sneak up on people with that giant ball of fire?” he asked rethorically.

A chill hung in the air around them, far enough away so he could feel their surroundings without feeling the orb of fire next to him. ”You were vague on the phone. Is that a magic thing? Being vague?” he asked knowing his other interactions with mystics were either fighting them, being challenged by them (from a Greek Demi-God) and Afoie who was well... just difficult.

”You don’t mean an actual demon right?” the former assassin asked. A small blade felt heavy at his back itching to be used. Typically Sam would stick to his powers and his skills but too many mystics were getting good at disrupting his powers enough for him to consider brining a ‘side-arm’ and unlike his pal from Texas, Sam wasn’t a fan of using the one with gunpowder.

The request came on the heels of the one-eyed man who loomed out of the darkness. “Sorry,” Rex said as he switched his gaze to his firelight. He frowned and focused and then the light and heat dimmed. Now it was as a dying lantern, still casting light but no longer a beacon of brightness and warmth. “Better?” he asked.

He assumed Sam was worried about stealth. “I have no intentions of sneaking up on anyone,” he said flatly. “It’s better to approach things head-on.”

The presence of Sam included a remarkable decrease in air temperature. Rex’s breath plumed into the air. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know,” he said grimly. “I do not spend time with magic users, other than Hercules and he, well, he’s not…standard, from my understanding.” That sounded suitably non-insulting.

“Sorry for being vague,” Rex continued as he turned a corner to get back on track with the direction spell. “There’s a lot I don’t know and some things are better said in person, if at all.” He glanced around reflexively before looking back at Sam.

“Father Lorenzo at St. Peter’s Church of the Cross contacted me just a few hours ago,” he began. “He said a person had confessed to being involved with a group of people who engaged in Satanic practices. Unlike other groups, this one could demonstrate actual abilities outside the normal ken of mutations. Tonight they plan on sacrificing a victim to bring a demon to this world.”

Faint, burning flames flashed in Rex’s eyes and he fixed Sam with a look. “It doesn’t really matter what it is, does it? A person’s life is on the line and if these are mystics, they should not be allowed to continue on this path.”

More softly, Rex added, “....I hope you will keep this confidential as well. Father Lorenzo is already skirting a line of breaking the confessional in telling me. I'm telling you this because….I am not certain I can do this alone.” I am also not certain that this will not be my inevitable end.

”A little.” he said truthfully. It was the heat that was the issue, though the light was still distracting for him. Any heat signatures he had to make sure to note before writing it off as a non-threat. It had been years since he lost his eye but he was still adapting to his thermal vision. It helped him stay on his toes and if they were about to fight a demon of some kind, it would no doubt come in handy.

”Not exactly my style, I need information to go on before just waltzing in. How many, any hostages, or anything else that might cause a problem for me or who I’m with.” he nodded his head in the dim light extending the cold around them as far as it could go revealing a small nest of birds in some bushes nearby.

”Exactly, Herc might be able to go in head first but if there is a better way. We aren’t all immortal.” having heard the ‘god’ spout the claim numerous times. Yes he was strong, yes he could keep taking hits but everything froze eventually.

”It’s a lead. Sometimes that’s all we got.” Sam added reassuringly before the rest of the information dump. The icemancer listened as Rex explained his source and more information about the situation.

”I get it.” his hands were up in a ‘let’s keep calm’ gesture. ”They won’t get away with it, we will stop them and anything I tell the police will not reveal the source of the tip. No worries. Not my first time dealing with a unanimous tip.” Sam said understanding the issue of trust.

”Lead the way... just... let’s get a head count before getting into anything." Two clones of ice started to form behind Sam. ”I don’t like surprises in situations like this.” being outnumbered by mystics was one of them.

Rex shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his pea coat as the temperature decreased even more. This wasn’t the first time this had happened around Sam, and Rex had suspected it wouldn’t be the last time, so he was prepared. “Father, please warm my hands,” he whispered, mentally reaching the place where he knew fire dwelt. Warmth began suffusing his hands and radiating outward like a small heat lamp, helping to take the chill away from what leaked through the coat.

They continued on as Rex followed his feet. He nodded. “Good points. There are at least five other cultists, at least one victim,” he said. It had slipped his mind to mention it before, which is why he’d chosen to request aid from the professional. “Might be more, I didn’t get details. I’m not sure all of them are mystics, but at least the leader is.” He removed his now-warm hands from his pockets and spread them apologetically.

The situation certainly wasn’t ideal. He knew that. There were so many things that could go wrong, that would go wrong. He didn’t feel up to the task - his magic was weak. Who else could do it though? There wasn’t time to find other allies in the know, to learn how to use his abilities to exorcize spirits and the like. He’d have to rely upon what he already knew and could do.

“The Lord never puts upon us more than we can bear,” he said, as much for himself as for Sam.

Not long after that, Rex felt a gentle warmth fill him. His feet stopped moving. He glanced up and only then realized he was standing in front of a run-down garage in a seedy neighborhood where abandoned homes outnumbered the good ones two to one, where even the rats traveled in small groups out of fear of being alone. Rex doused his fireball.

“We’re here.”

Rex’s heat source grew and Sam tried to ignore it, it was the same issue with the flames but knew his thermal imaging ability often made it colder for others. There was a time when all of his teammates had to wear jackets when going out on patrol with him. Thankfully he had learned to control his powers better.

The cold around Rex faded away no longer focusing on the mystic. There was no reason to at this point. Sam trusted the man. He was after all one of his sponsors meaning he knew more now than most probably. There was no way this was a trap set up by the man. Right?

”Five.” Sam repeated back to himself and looked over his shoulder to the ice clones. Both of which were now fully formed and awaiting orders from their creator. They stalked behind Sam in silence. ”So you keep telling me.” there was a reason he turned to drinking instead of religion. One was something he could see feel the other... less abundant in his life.

”We are.” the fireball faded and his thermal imaging spread out before him looking for any major heat sources. There were rats, lots of them. He could ignore them for now, when he Rex and the clones approached they scattered well enough. Hopefully the mystics they were about to drop in on would do the same.

Two houses lit up. Both of which wouldn’t have seen odd to Sam but one of them generated far more heat than anything else on the block. The heat wafted off the broken roof escaping from all of the neglected holes. ”Think I found it.” Sam said nodding his head and waving the clones forward. They scattered to the end of his controlled range and started to close in on the house that seemed the most off to him.

”It’s generating the most heat.”

The X-Man was on the move. Rex nodded and slipped along after him. His hands left his pockets and warmth radiated openly from them. The chill had diminished around him, earning another nod of appreciation from, yet he didn’t dismiss the effect.

Rex took in the sorry state of the house. For all that it was occupied, it looked as though the house was normally empty, its owners long gone. It was in a state of vile disrepair. Faint flickerings of light could be seen through cracks in the boarded up windows.

“Then let’s move in,” Rex said. He double-timed it to the door and with a practiced motion, delivered a solid firefighter’s kick to the door just above the handle and lock, shattering through the decrepit wood. He reached in through the hole and deftly pulled back the dead bolt before retracting his hand and shouldering the broken door open.

Immediately there were cries of surprise and shouts of outrage amid the sounds of a continuous chant. Rex barreled into the house and immediately was nearly blinded. The living room was extremely dark, only the light of five candles in the shape of a star on the hardwood provided any illumination.

Numerous silhouettes of cloaked people filled the room. Some of them were inside the light of the star, the others milled around the edges.

“Don’t stop,” a voice disconcertingly close to Rex snarled. “We’ll take care of them.”

Then Rex was seized by the shoulders and flung into the wall by the door.

The closer he got to the house the more and more flickering of thermal readings became clearer. Despite Rex’s abilities. Candlelight take shape meaning Sam was already coming up with a game plan. The way they stood made the center of the circle and the focus of the would be cultists clear but there was no one in the center. Not yet at least.

Eyeing the front door Sam wondered what the best point to enter would be. If they did a direct approach... his lone eye focused on Rex walking past him while his mind raced. The clones were about to circle the house and jump in through the first floor windows however that wasn’t what happened.

The door was kicked open and entered. Sam stood on the outside waiting for Rex to move in. He did, then the firefighter was thrown like it was nothing. ”Rex, think we found it!” when his friend smacked into the wall next to the door Sam had all the clearance he needed to press inwards, his clones followed in toe.

The robbed figure that tossed Rex was met with a clone who tackled it to the ground while Sam and the other figure of ice surged into the main room. ”Oh ****” he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It didn’t matter though, it didn’t' need to make sense. His lone eye shifted to every ones feet while he relied on the thermal readings to give him most of his information. He wasn’t going to be mind wammied again.

“Keep chanting!” one of the cultists shouted as he charged Sam. With a sidestep and a shove his attacker was pressed into clone number two who wrapped around the hooded figure and fell backward fusing the robed one to the wall with a sheet of ice.

The chants were going, ”Ooga oooga chaka!” he repeated his own chant trying to distract everyone while he lunged at the next figure.

Pain wracked Rex’s shoulder as he bounced off the sturdy wall. At that moment, the temperature plummeted and he could almost feel Sam moving in like a cold front. The vague lights of the candles cast everything in strange, flickering light and Rex himself had almost no night vision, a result of his prior fireball.

He was blind and in a melee.

One of the robed figures who wasn’t part of the chant extended a baton and struck the sheet of ice sticking their fellow cultist to the wall. The ice shattered instantly. Another robed figure spat some words in some Slavic language and the tattoo on her bald head suddenly shone with dim blue light as she blurred toward Sam, a faintly glowing knife in her hand.

There was already chaos, but with the suddenness with which everyone reacted and sprang into action, Rex immediately had the gut feeling these were professionals, if not mystics, than at least in illegitimate activities under the cover of night.

They looked like a job for Sam. He was the X-Men. Rex was the firefighter. He lowered his good shoulder and charged toward the star in the room as soon as he saw an opening. He slammed into someone stepping in his way and then both went down, rolling into the legs of one of the chanters and toppling the three of them into a pile of limbs.

Ice climbed up Sam’s arms and feet as he landed a knee into a gut sending the target top double over and roll to the side, it was fight that was for sure. His lone eye focused on everywhere but the eyes of the other mystics. It was about as predictable as jumping into a fight with random mutants, he didn’t know their skill sets but he was trained. Meaning his clones were trained and Rex well...

Rex ran into the other room. That was fine, he didn’t have to worry about giving his friend frost bite. What he did have to worry about was Rex being on the floor with those he tackled. It was a bad time to be on the ground. ”Rex!” he shouted sidestepping the knife wielding woman whose head was glowing blue. ”Your right!” the knife hissed through the air as he dodged again.

His eye was able to focus on the hand movement now while his thermal sense illuminated the rest of the rooms to him. Rex was on the ground with two others, there was a third running towards them.

The air in front of Sam hissed again as the blue headed woman snarled at him and sliced the air again trying to blind Sam. ”I only have one left!” he shouted blocking the third strike and grabbing hold of the hand controlling the knife.

”Clone!” Sam shouted and spun pulling the woman into a throw. One of the clones turned disengaging with it’s target to hold open a stiff arm catching the woman that was thrown. She dropped.

A baton whizzed through the air striking the lone clone that was still formed causing it to shatter with a small ‘crack’. That shouldn’t of happened, in fact the wall of ice shouldn’t have cracked either. They were using magic. Great.

”Rex, how you doing in there?” Sam asked sidestepping another baton and countering with a back fist to the guys face. The temperature dropped another thirty degrees causing one or two of the candles to go out as ice overtook the candle.

In the brief moments of startlement, as Rex lay in the middle of a people pile in the middle of the five-pointed circle, he started moving. An elbow into a face, a foot lashing out into the stomach of a standing chanter, who promptly stumbled back out of the circle. A note of fury entered the chant and the remaining three got even louder.

Rex could hear Sam checking it, but he didn’t have the spare breath to respond. ”His breath kindleth coals…” he began saying even as he squirmed to lock down the arms of one of the two people he was grappling. A face turned to him and serpentine eyes glowered at him. An arm looped around Rex’s neck and yanked him back. ”...and a flame goeth out of his mouth!”

Rex twisted and rolled on top of the second cultist. By now they had knocked down the remaining candles and darkness fell, if only for the moment. Then Rex exhaled harshly in the face of the person beneath him.

Red-orange flames brushed the person’s face and they screamed. Rex cut off the stream before significant damage could be done, but he couldn’t afford to pull too many punches. A first-degree burn, if even that happened, would heal. It was more a psychological inducement of fear than anything.

Rex punched the person’s face and then rolled off and onto his feet. He sucked in a breath and then blew out and whirled in a circle, a small jet of flames following his motion like a circus firebreather. Nobody was in immediate arm’s reach and in that brief flash of firelight, Rex could take in the scene.

Three chanters were left, forming a triangle now instead of a circle. The person he’d kicked was recovering and standing up straight. The person with serpent-like eyes was rolling to their feet.

Rex put up his fists.

The sound of bone a nose breaking could be heard from the impact. A little harder than Sam wanted but they were planning on sacrificing someone to open a gate to hell. Or wherever they were planning on opening a gate to. Sam just knew it was bad. A broken nose was nothing compared to an army of demons being unleased in the city.

Sam didn’t get the answer he was expecting, in fact probably no one was expecting what happened next. The room grew dark just before a brilliant jet of fire erupted from where Rex was. Sam could tell because the person that was getting tangled up with the two that were tackled to the ground was getting warmer. Hot even. Too hot to feel.

Severing the connection of his thermal sense during the durations of the flames Sam slammed a wall to his back pushing up against the faded wallpaper.

The house grew orange with fire. At first Sam thought it was the portal opening, but then again this was not a roaring inferno of a burning building, this was coming from a person's breath. He had seen Rex spew flames before. At least those creatures were made of flames. This was no different other than the intensity of the heat. It was... not as hot as he had seen Rex breathe.

He was holding back.

Another jet of fire in a circle then darkness. In those brief moments of darkness and cold, when the light and heat faded Sam made his moves. With the wall to his back, he got a scene of everything. Those with their attention turned from Sam to the flames and those in the room still chanting. A clone of ice formed again this time charging right into the room to give Rex a hand. It was going after the triangle of people.

There would have been two after them, but the baton whistled through the air hitting the other that formed slightly after.

“You are fighting us freak. You don’t have time to be looking elsewhere.”

Sam chuckled, if they could have seen him properly, they would have known his good eye was shut. ”I’ll have to make this quick then.” the air around them got even colder as more ice climbed up the wall and up Sam.

Before Rex could blink, a clone of ice barreled through the room and crashed into one of the chanters. His mouth opened and he exhaled, a quick puff of flame vaguely illuminating the gist of the scene. The person broke off chanting and screamed at the sudden assault from nowhere. A note of desperation entered the voices of the other two chanters.

The snake-eyed man charged at Rex and the firefighter met him with a tackle and a breath of fire again in his face. The man recoiled, trailing smoke invisibly in the darkness. “Aagh!” he said before throwing a punch. Rex ate the blow on a forearm and tried to close in for another grapple, but the man slithered out of range. Rex blew more fire, but the man juked back again.

In the meantime, the one Rex had kicked glared with suddenly glowing eyes. “Lux nunc!” she snapped. The ceiling began glowing with white light, brightening the entire room. She whirled and pointed at the ice clone, shouting, “Vincire catenis!” Four chains made of green light burst out of nowhere and struck at each of the clone’s limb in attempts to entangle it.

Rex winced at the horrific Latin pronunciation and then winced as the snake-eyed man managed to strike his injured shoulder and dart out beyond Rex’s firebreath. Rex backed up again and decided he needed more firepower.

“Go in between the wheels,” he whispered, quickly reaching out and grabbing invisible coals. A fireball formed around each fist and he resumed his earlier stance.

There was heat, Rex was fighting back. Sam couldn’t focus for too long otherwise he felt he would go blind. It was like looking into the sun. Speaking of which, the room lit up behind him. His eye was still shut but he could see through his closed eyelid. He didn’t want to open them incase he was sent into another mind **** illusion. He always doubted he could fight those off. It was... too welcoming.

The clone froze in place as the four green chains wrapped around the clones limbs, Sam could have countered it but he wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t see what was restraining the clone at the moment.

Movement in front of him caused him to sidestep again as the baton whiffed the air where his nose was seconds before. The mystic followed it up with another and another. Sam dodged them all well enough but he was noticing the man was trying to drive him into a corner where another mystic had moved to. Chanting behind him and now in front the baton he couldn’t see started to get hot and he had to sever his thermal sense. His eye snapped open and he saw it was on fire. Cute.

”Rex, how we looking buddy?” he wanted to know the timeline of the portal or whatever the spell they were working on. He didn’t know magic but he was phenomenal at working under pressure.

The air moved rapidly behind him in fact small debris and shards of broken ice started getting lifted and sucked up to a point between the mystic behind him. Sam smirked and willed the ice to jet outward long enough to stab the mystic disrupting the spell and causing said mystic to their knees trying to stifle the bleeding.

Sam turned blasted a beam of ice and froze the found and them in place before turning to the last one he was tangling with.

“Not great!” Rex shouted as he threw a punch at the snake-eyed man who once again slithered out of reach. His flaming fist passed over the man’s head as he ducked. “I think they’re almost done!” The chanters certainly seemed to be reaching a climax. Rex could almost feel the energy building, feeling a lot like that place he reached out to when he called for fire.

Then a boot smashed into Rex’s stomach. ‘Mmmph!” he said, exhaling a blast of flames from his mouth right into the man’s face. He hissed and pulled back, but then Rex flung his coals and the fireballs leaped from his hands to blaze against the man’s now thrice-burned face.

“Vincire catenis!”

More green chains snaked out of nowhere and latched onto Rex’s limbs, yanking them apart until he stood spread eagle. “Aaagh!” he yelled at yanking in his muscles.

“"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword…” Rex began whispering as fast as he could.