It would have been easier if he was alone. He didn’t verbalize that though, Rex brought him along it would have been rude to ask him to sit this one out. The whole place would have been frozen solid by now. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and they were close to finishing from what Rex said. He was the magic expert. Sam was just along for the ride.

”Hold on.” his eye opened as he turned he couldn’t focus on Rex, or near him when he was using his thermal vision. Raising a hand he shot a beam of blue, one that remained for a few seconds. He was aiming for the floor where the seal was. Hoping it would help. He hated magic. It was too unpredictable.

Ice creeped upwards from the floor until it looked like a miniature iceberg. A clone started to crawl out reaching for the mystic who had just kicked Rex.

Sam’s lone eye spotted Rex chained. ”****” he cursed and ran into the room disengaging with the mystic who just missed him again with a baton that whistled with each whiff. A blade of ice formed and Sam took a swing at the spell restraining Rex.

Before Rex could finish the verse, Sam was there, slicing through one of the chains. The rest of the chain evaporated as the powering magic escaped the container. Rex broke off reciting. “I’ve got this! Stop the ritual!” he said, a small gout of flames blasting from his mouth on accident.

There was ice covering the ritual spot now. The candles were gone. Two people were chanting. Rex could feel the power building, building.

The woman pointed at Sam and cried out her mangled Latin expression, as more green chains shot out from near her toward the mutant.

Then a final person appeared in the room, with a person-shaped and sized sack flung over their shoulder. With his now-freed hand, Rex threw his last fireball at the new person. If a fire started, he’d trust to Cold Steel to put it out.

Now it was time to trust in the Lord. He began rapidly reciting the same scripture from the start. “...piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Brightness flared into existence in his free hand, quickly forming a longsword of light.

”How?” Sam asked grunting and moving away from Rex at his suggestion. Ice dug into the floor now trying to disrupt the circle. He didn’t understand magic. Nor had a belief in it until recently. It was not in his wheelhouse. Give him a mutation and he could figure out a few ways to defeat it. Magic? Only thing he could think of was kill the caster and it was still frowned upon for X-men to kill.

Someone else entered the room. He heard Latin and suddenly his arms were bound. Sam looked down to see the same chains that held Rex moments before entangling him. He pulled and tried to loosen them failing in freeing himself. ”Come on!” he shouted as from the center of the room where the ice was covering the ritual circle a blade of ice erupted and fell cutting one of the chains it was his foot.

With his foot now free he formed some ice and kicked upwards hitting another chain. It took two more strikes but he freed himself. ”What now?” he asked blasting some fire that caught on a curtain from Rex’s spell.

The ice worked it’s way into the grain of the wood where the ritual was being cast. It warped and spread till the circle broke and caused the flooring to become uneven.

”I don’t know!” Rex growled, his anger not aimed at Sam but rather their situation and his own lack of knowledge. “Stop the chanting?”

With the shining blade in his freed hand, Rex whipped it overhead, slicing through the spectral chain snagging his arm. Chain links burst on contact as the energies inside the sword shredded the spell keeping the chains in existence. The chain links burst into green wisps as they were dispelled and the bound energy was released harmlessly.

He slashed at the chains lashing his feet down and they swiftly vanished as well, the contact with each causing only a modicum of pressure in his head. Physically, it was like cutting air with a blade of grass.

Cold Steel was much closer to the ritual. Rex could see the warped wood. Then the pressure Rex felt building…hesitated. Then it vanished.

“Hallelujah,” Rex said as the chanter stopped.

“Scutum!” the woman shrieked in panic. She flung her hands up and a wall of green light appeared between Rex and Cold Steel and the woman and the final two people. The guy who’d REx thrown a fireball at swore, running back out of the room with the bodybag. The woman was shaking, eyes wide with fear as their plans were torn asunder.

The chanter? He just looked furious. “Potens daemonium!” he snarled. “Daemonium inferni! I vocare te!”

Rex’s own eyes widened as he heard the butchered Latin. “Stop! Stop!” he roared as he lunged forward to slash the force field with his anti-magic sword. “He’s summoning a demon anyways!”

“Veni, daemon, devora inimicos meos!” the man said and he took a knife from his belt and slashed it across his arms. The blood hit the ice and it started sizzling. Then it flared like a magnesium torch and out of a sharp white light, something started pulling itself into the world.

It was large and froglike, hunched over yet still eye level with the tallest people in the room. It had green and black skin and dripped yellow mucus. It stared around with buglike eyes and then the chanter pointed at Rex and Cold Steel. “Kill them!”

The horror leaped.

”You’re mad at them not at me!” Sam chirped back wishing the chanting to stop. It didn’t. The chains vanished and he fought the other one holding his hand. Ice formed on the spectral links and he hit it a few times until he was freed.

There was more latin, Sam wished he paid attention more when they tried to drill the language into him when he was a kid. ”What are they saying?” something about a sanctuary? The demon part he got.

One of the mystics fled with a body bag after the light in the room faded. There was blood and another mystic bleeding. Sam looked to Rex hesitant to do anything else. This wasn’t his wheelhouse and he didn’t know how magic worked. He hated it. Simple as that.

The room got hot and bright and he severed his thermal sense bringing more ice to coat his body protecting him further from whatever was happening. A lone eye shut and he called the clone to step in front of him.

His eye opened and he was staring at... ”What the **** is that? it leapt after the order. Sam moved to the side and shoved Rex out of the way. The creature landed on Sam and they both rolled backwards into the wall. Shoving his feet under whatever the heck the frog thing was he pushed slamming it further as he tried to move out of the way.

The clone slammed into the demon next.

”Rex! Tell me how to beat this thing!”

Come, Demon! Devour my enemies!

Rex translated the incantation in his head, suppressing a wince at the grammar and pronunciation. “You don’t want to know!” he called back to Cold Steel, making the sign of the Cross with his free hand.

Then the demon appeared. “Dios mio!” Rex breathed. He held his sword in front of him, suddenly hyper-aware it had no real physical form. The demon lept and reflexively, Rex closed his eyes in preparation for….whatever.

He was slammed from the side and his eyes opened to see Sam take his place in front of the demon and get tackled. Rex barely remembered to keep his hand clasped around his sword of light and suddenly he was quizzed on tactics. “I’m a firefighter, not a priest!” Rex yelled. An ice clone charged into the fray. Where the ice touched the mucus-covered demon skin, Rex could hear slight sizzling, like acid.

“Try smashing it until it breaks!” Rex said as he turned his sights on the woman. The man had fallen to his knees and his arms were bleeding steadily as he focused on the demon with manic hatred.

The woman threw up another barrier, but Rex set his jaw. He jogged forward and ripped the spell apart with his sword of the Spirit. She started babbling something in horrifically butchered Latin, but then Rex rammed the sword through her chest, grabbed the back of her head, and pulled her in close.

“Don’t bother, your magic is no good now,” Rex said as his blade’s energy disrupted the magical energy channel inside her. “Tell me how to stop this thing.”

”Don’t care what your job is! I just need someone who can dispel the magic!” he really hated not knowing anything about magic. A blast of ice hit the form of the demon and it slowed as it was being stuck to the wall Sam had kicked it into.

”Smashing it till it breaks.” Sam repeated and rolled his eye as a jet of acidic vomit erupted from the beasts mouth countering his ice beam. The ice melted and turned to water which Sam willed into spikes that show up into the demon’s side.

Hissing out in pain the creature lunged at Sam knocking the wind out of him and slamming him into the ground that was already weakened from his ice.

Both fell through the floor into the darkness of the basement. With a splash and a grunt Sam landed in ankle high water.

The woman immediately began babbling.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she said. “There was a ceremony and--and--and you ruined everything!” She tried to hit Rex in the chest but he ignored it. She had no leverage and she wasn’t very physically imposing. With the sword of light disrupting her magic channeling, he wouldn’t have to worry about magical attacks either.

Then the floor caved in under Cold Steel. “Sam!” Rex yelled as the mutant and the demon fell into the basement.

Red sparks danced around his eyes as Rex contemplated bringing fire to the place, scorching the Earth. This was evil and unholy. An abomination. Yet…these were still souls, no matter the pain and suffering they had intended to inflict.

Rex spun her around and put her in a chokehold as he held her against him, his sword-hand still keeping the blade in her chest. “If we ruined everything, we might as well finish the job then.”

He force-marched her over to the guy who had summoned the monster. His hair was starting to smoke and stand on end as sickening green veins started spreading from his eyes and mouth. His eyes were unfocused even as he turned to look at Rex.

Rex turned with the woman and donkey-kicked the man in the stomach.

The icemancer didn’t know when the water got here or for how long it was here but other than the smell of mold it was a welcome feeling. More material to turn to his favor. Sam exhaled, letting the air escape from his chest, allowing himself to draw in more now that he caught it. There was a faint rumbling and then some splashes of water in one of the corners.

>>>Sam!

Sam turned, bringing the water up as it condensed into ice crystals blocking a plume of acidic spit followed up by maniacal laughter. His thermal sense slowly started to creep back out around him. He could still feel Rex and the others above him, but he didn’t push the thermal readings any further than that. It was the demon he was searching for.

The ice before him started to melt back into the water. The laughter went quiet as he turned his head slightly. His eye adjusted to the light, and he waited for the next attack. There wa a chuckle behind him and Sam turned, bringing the ice up in an arc. The demon hissed out in pain as it was impaled by an ice spike.

”Good... finally caught you.” the demon’s head turned unnaturally towards Sam as it tried to pull itself off of the spike of ice. It spat towards Sam but only met ice as the floor became visible. All the water in the room turned to ice crystals. Spikes erupted upwards on the rest of the creature. It howled.

”Are you breaking?” Sam took a step back as a pile of black blood started leaking out. The creature spat again at some of the ice spikes but more took its place. ”You will.” Sam raised his hand and hit the creature with a beam of blue till the creature started to slow, then stopped moving. ”****ing magic...”

Rex turned back, the woman in his grasp almost a dancing partner, as he finished his kick. The summoner’s eyes bulged out in pain and he forcibly released all the air in his lungs and he flew back a few feet before striking the floor. The chanting stopped and his eyes rolled back in his head, then he went limp. He was out.

“Aiiiii!” the woman screamed and she started writhing. “Help me! He’s going to kill me!” she yelled, more for Sam’s sake than anyone else’s.

“Stop that,” Rex barked, not quite in her ear so no flames would lick her. “You are not a victim here,” he said gruffly. “You are an accomplice. Now where did the other guy go? Where is the sacrifice victim?”

The woman stopped screaming, stared at Rex for a moment, and then her eyes screwed up and she started crying. “I don’t knowwww!” she blubbered. “Please don’t hurt me!”

“How are you doing, Cold Steel?” Rex shouted, flames flicking out from his mouth just past the woman’s head, to a first genuine yelp from her.

>>>“Help me! He’s going to kill me!”

”Better him than me.” Sam said stepping back and watching his work as the creature was impaled, frozen and bleeding out. It's saliva however was still melting the ice and the creatures fingers still twitched in the dim fire light from the curtain above that he didn’t put out.

The little amount of water that was still at the base of Sam’s feet turned into armor covering his body fully as he circled the frozen creature. Felling the devil’s eyes still on him he formed a katana made of ice and approached to the side. The spikes of ice shifted slightly for the icemancer to walk in closer to take a swing.

>>> “How are you doing, Cold Steel?”

There was a plea for help and Sam ignored it. He walked up the stairs with the creature's head frozen in a block of ice that he carried like a brief case his other hand held the sword over his shoulder. The X-team leader was tired and irritated. The door to the basement opened and Sam walked out dropping the block of ice before Rex and the woman.

”Loaded question. I want a drink and I’m tired. Pretty sure it’s dead.” he said looking over his should ”Still bleeding out down there. But I got the head. That kills it right?” he asked looking to the two mystics. ”You find out where their sacrifice was carried to?” he asked looking to the woman and lowering his sword a smear of black demon blood dripped from the tip.

Rex exhaled a bit of flame in relief as Cold Steel emerged from the basement. The demon was defeated and it wasn’t hard to figure out how. Rex nodded to the man. ”Your guess is as good as mine,” Rex said. ”Can’t think of many things that can survive a beheading though. Still…”

Rex swiped his sword of light through the woman’s chest and slashed through the ice. The ice was untouched by the energies therein, but they savaged the demon construct as the blade finished off the dying spell. The head began to rapidly unravel inside the block of ice.

”I think that’ll do it for sure,” he said, stabbing the woman with it again before she could start casting any more spells.

”I do not know for sure,” Rex said. ”I saw the man head out the back door with the victim. I did not see where he went. I think this woman knows more, but I haven’t gotten anything out of her yet. I think we should hurry though - who knows what they’ll do next?”

The icemancer leaned against the wall and let out a sigh of relief when Rex finished off the creature. It was beheaded but it was magic. Something Sam still didn’t understand. It sounded like Rex barely knew more than him. Which was why his spell was the final nail in the coffin for... whatever the **** they just killed. ”I’m pretty good at making people talk.” Sam said his finger raising into the air.

It got colder in the room. They were going after the hostage next and the one who ran out the back door but they might be able to head the pair off. ”You know what happens when people get frost bite? Hands? Fingers? Feet? You don’t know you lost feeling till the burning stops. The nerve endings die off. Skin goes black, brittle. Easy to break, impossible to heal. Probably even with magic.” Sam said as he looked from Rex to the woman.

”Now I only met two people who managed to keep their mouth shut during my interrogation process. Both of them can no longer open their mouths.” the air got colder.

”I got it from here, go see if you can find them. We didn’t see any vehicles nearby meaning they are getting picked up or they are on foot.” Sam looked back to the woman.

”Now tell me what your next plans are? Where are they going?” mist started to pour off his finger looking as if it was steaming from the frigid temperatures.

Rex stayed where he was.

He saw the look in Cold Steel’s eyes and now Rex could see where the man got his name. The air turned sharp and crisp and Rex’s breath, now losing the accompanying flames as the spell wore off, produced steam with each exhalation.

The Catholic man’s eyebrows drew together and Rex’s stare turned to a glare. The woman began shaking, from either the cold, fear, or both, and she started to scream.

“Stop,” Rex barked at Sam, turning to the side so the woman wasn’t immediately in front of Sam but angled so he could still see the other man. “We will not resort to such tactics.”

He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. There was no fire burning in his eyes, other than the light of conviction shining there.

“Father, please warm my hands and hers,” Rex said, not breaking eye contact with Sam’s one eye. Soothing warmth began radiating from their hands, countering the increased chill. The woman stilled and stopped screaming, although he could not know if she was pacified, terrified, or calculating.

”Tell us where they’re going and God may have mercy on your soul,” Rex said to the woman. ”Cold Steel will not, and I cannot guarantee I can stop him.”

Rex told him to stop... the icemancer cocked his head to the side a little bit and eyed the pyromancer confused as to why he wanted Sam to stop. The woman was shaking, terrified. Good, they had someone they were willing to kill to summon a demon. One Sam had already slain, who's to say they wouldn’t try it again at another location. Sam wanted answers.

Upon the man’s spell the air got warmer around them, not just from the spell but because the look he had given Sam. Was that disappointment? It was a look he didn’t see often but knew he might have gone a little far with the threat. It was clear Rex was the ‘good cop’ between them.

The woman looked up finally to Rex, she stopped shaking from the cold and shifted to get out of Sam’s gaze. Her eyes still full of terror she stuttered, “O-o-out back. We have a van a few blocks away...”

”Do what you want with her!” Sam said rushing to the back door and opening it activating a trap spell that was on the other side of the door. There was a small explosion. The door shattered and knocked the icemancer through a wall.