X-Men: Trek Wars by Ben Church All X-Men Characters are the property of Marvel Comics. All Star Wars characters are the property of Lucasfilm. All Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount. All Dragonlance characters are the property of TSR. Chapter 4A Cybo was dreaming. He must be dreaming, for the last thing he remembered was going to bed, and now here he was standing on the edge of this forest. (The following sequence takes place in Dragonlance Chronicles Volume 2. It is a flashback. Much of the text is directly stolen from the book. My apologies to Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, but I wanted it to be as close to the actual events as possible.) Behind him, he saw a flight of strange creatures flying away. In his mind, he found the word for what they were: Griffins. "How did I know that?" he thought. "This is a strange dream." It was indeed. For he was not alone. He accompanied by many other people. He had seen none of them before in his life, but he knew them. To his left were five people. A tall man with red hair, and a beard. Another tall man who was heavily muscled. A woman with pale skin and pointed ears. She looked extremely annoyed that the Griffins were leaving. A young woman with red hair was clinging to the heavily muscled man, and casting fearful glances at a foreboding looking man in a red robe. He had golden skin. To Cybo's right were more and equally strange people. Two were rather ordinary looking, if primitively dressed. A powerful looking man with long brown hair, and a blond woman holding a blue staff. The rest were the most unusual of all. A blue furry beast, a brown haired stern looking man wearing a red visor, a scantily clothed woman with purple hair, another woman with a streak of white in her brown hair, a man with red eyes, a young girl wearing a yellow coat, and finally a short dangerous looking man. Cybo looked down at himself and saw that he too was dressed as they were, except he had a sword buckled to his belt. And his face felt strange. He reached up, and felt his left eye. Instead of his bionic eye, he found an empty socket with a patch over it. The last of the confusion drifted away as his mind completely fell into the role he was to play in this dream. He was no longer Cybo of the Imperial Guard. He was Hotshot of the Uncanny X-Men. "Well that is that." Alhana said, ignoring the angry glances he and his companions cast at her. "We shall simply have to walk, that's all. The way is not far." The companions stood stranded upon the river bank, staring across the sparkling water into the forest beyond. None of them spoke. Hotshot could tell that they were all as tense as he was. He stared hard into the forest, searching for any sign of danger. Beside him, Wolverine sniffed the air. There was no sound, no movement from the forest ahead of them. Hotshot looked questioningly at Wolverine. "Nothin' kid." Wolverine said, glancing suspiciously at Alhana. "Just the usual smells o' winter." Raising his voice, he addressed the Elf Princess, "Looks like the party's over darlin'." Alhana glowered at Wolverine but had given up chastising him for his familiarity. "Are you trying to piss her off Homme?" Gambit asked him softly. "Now you know me better than that Cajun." Wolverine smiled. "I thought you said your people had fled because they were under siege?" Tanis said to Alhana. "If this land is under control of Dragons then I'm a Gully Dwarf." Caramon snorted. Hotshot gasped and pointed over Caramon's shoulder. "Behind you!" he warned. Then he snickered as Caramon whirled around to face the nonexistent threat. "This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system. Had this been an actual emergency, there would have some form of hideous monster behind you." Hotshot grinned. Jubilee laughed and high-fived him. Then Hotshot looked at the annoyed expressions on his friends' faces. "Tas would have laughed." he muttered. "This is no time for jokes." Cyclops reprimanded him. "Yes mein Fuhrer. It von't happen again." Cyclops just frowned. "We were!" Alhana answered Tanis. Oblivious to Hotshot's shenanigans, her eyes scanned the sunlit forest. "Dragon's filled the skies-as in Tarsis! The Dragonmen entered our beloved woods, burning, destroying-" her voice died. "Okay," Hotshot said. "I'm officially confused. And as we all know, there is only one thing to do when you're confused. Beast, what the hell is going on?" "I'm afraid I'm as in the dark as you my friend." Beast replied. "According to our Elven guide, this picturesque forest was invaded by dragons. And yet neither our eyes, nor Wolverine's excellent senses can detect any sign of said attack." "And if Wolvie don't smell it, you can bet it ain't there." Jubilee said confidently. Caramon leaned near Riverwind and muttered, "Wild goose chase!" The plainsman scowled, as did Wolverine. "If it's nothing more than that we'll be fortunate," he said, his eyes on the elfmaid. "Why did she bring us here? Perhaps it's a trap." "Just what I was thinkin' Plainsman." Wolverine growled. "I've never been inclined to trust anybody that had such contempt for another race." "Rouge," Cyclops suggested. "Check out the scene from the air. See if you can find any sign of a battle." Rouge nodded and drifted into the air. Caramon considered Wolverine's and Riverwind's opinions a moment, then glanced uneasily at his brother, who had not spoken or moved or taken his strange eyes from the forest since the griffins left. The big warrior loosened his sword in it's scabbard and moved a step closer to Tika. Almost accidentally it seemed to Hotshot, their two hands clasped. Hotshot smiled, and realized that after Wolverine had suggested that it might be a trap, Jubilee had taken his hand in hers, and held it tightly. Tika cast a frightened glance at Raistlin but held onto Caramon tightly. The mage just stared fixedly at the forest. Beside him, Psylocke stood with her eyes closed, concentrating, searching for some clue as to what had happened here. The silence was deafening. "Tanis!" Alhana said suddenly. Behind her, Hotshot jumped. Alhana forgot her self in her joy and put her hand on Tanis's arm. "Maybe it worked! Maybe my father defeated them, and we can come home! Oh Tanis-" "There's no place like home." Hotshot said, in a cheerful falsetto voice. Alhana trembled with excitement. "We've got to cross the river and find out! Come!" "On command?" Hotshot said incredulously. Jubilee elbowed him. "The ferry landing is down around the bend!" "Alhana, wait!" Tanis called, but she was already running along the smooth, grassy bank, her long full skirts fluttering around her ankles. "Alhana. Damn it! Caramon, Riverwind, Wolverine, go after her. Goldmoon, try to talk some sense into her." Wolverine didn't hesitate to go with Caramon and the Plainsman. It had taken some getting used to, having Tanis as their leader as well as Cyclops. But after so long on Krynn, it was second nature. Once Cyclops had come to trust Tanis' judgment, he had told them to regard any order from Tanis as an order from him. Tanis had done the same with his friends. The three warriors ran along the bank after Alhana. Tika and Goldmoon followed more slowly. "Who knows what's in these woods." Tanis muttered to Cyclops. "Raistlin-" Hotshot looked at the golden skinned man, curious as to what he would say. Since he'd arrived on Krynn he'd been, if not fascinated, then intrigued by magic. Not dangerously intrigued like a certain `Doorknob of a Kender' as Flint would say, but intrigued none the less. But the mage did not seem to hear Tanis, he seemed to Hotshot as if he were completely out of it. Tanis moved closer. "Raistlin?" he repeated, also seeing his abstract stare. Hotshot waved his hand in front of his face, hoping to catch his hourglass shaped eyes. "Yoo hoo, Raistlin! Earth-uh, Krynn to Raistlin! Come in please!" Raistlin stared at them blankly, as if waking from a dream. Then the mage became aware of someone speaking to him. He lowered his eyes. "What is it Raistlin?" Tanis asked. "What do you sense?" "Nothing Tanis," the mage replied. Tanis blinked, but Hotshot was unconvinced. "Nothing?" they repeated at the same time. "Jinx." Hotshot said quickly. Raistlin gave him one of his patented piercing stares. "Are you a mage now?" he asked sarcastically. "Forget it, keep going." Hotshot said. He did not like Raistlin's disdain, but he knew better than to call him on it. Unlike Tas, Hotshot had no desire to know what it felt like to be a grasshopper. "It is like an impenetrable fog, a blank wall," he whispered to Tanis. "I see nothing, I sense nothing." "Survey says," Hotshot tapped Psylocke on the shoulder. "What did you find?" Tanis asked her. "There's something in there all right." She said. "Something powerful." Tanis and Cyclops stared at Raistlin intently, and both knew that he was lying. But why? The mage returned the half elf's and the mutants' gazes with equanimity- even with a twisted smile on his lips, as if he knew they didn't believe him but didn't care. "Raistlin," Tanis said softly. "What if Lorac, the Elf King, tried to use the Dragon Orb? What would happen?" The mage lifted his eyes to stare into the forest. "Do you think that's possible?" he asked. "Yes." Tanis said. "From what little Alhana told me, during the Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery at Istar, a dragon orb spoke to Lorac, asking him to rescue it from the impending disaster." "And he obeyed it?" his voice was as soft as the murmuring river. Behind him, Hotshot and the rest of the X-Men listened with rapt attention, and a growing sense of foreboding. "Yes, he brought it to Silvanesti." "So this is the dragon orb of Istar." His eyes narrowed and he sighed. It was a sigh of longing. Hotshot glanced at Psylocke, neither liked the direction this was taking. "I know nothing of the dragon orbs," Raistlin said coolly. "Except what I have told you. But know this half-elf," he glanced at Cyclops, "Mutant, none of us will escape the forest unscathed, if we come out at all." "What do you mean? What danger is there?" Cyclops demanded. "What does it matter what danger I see?" Raistlin asked, his receding into the sleeves of his red robe. "We must enter Silvanesti, you know that as well as I do. Or will you forgo the chance to gain a dragon orb?" "But if you see danger tell us! We must enter prepared-" Tanis began angrily. "Then prepare." Raistlin said, and followed his brother. To be continued...