Template:Featured Articles/40-2017

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Moment of Awesome - Illyana Rasputin/Magik : A reluctant member of an assorted group of 'heroes', Illyana finds herself playing a larger role than she expected. Or wanted.

Hela considered this, her eyes surveying the group dispassionately. In the silence, the shadows near her feet roiled, the edges almost shredding where they hit the lit. "I accept," she said finally, with a regal nod not untinged with irony. "This will satisfy Bor's curse - which was indeed a shameful waste of skill and talent." She shrugged slightly. "Men."

Her eyes alit on the person most trying to avoid them. "You, girl," Hela said. "Come here and be useful."

"Me?" Illyana said, managing by force of will not to shrink from the sound of the woman's - the goddess's - voice. She looked toward the others, but didn't find any help for it; this is why she was here, after all.

"I do so hate to wait," Hela returned drily, flicking a finger that made her shadows flare for a moment. "That weapon of yours is - very nearly unique, I think. I have rarely encountered its like." The girl approached unwillingly, glancing back at Valkyrie and Garrison with a pained expression that was half adolescent and half - entirely something else. "You will be the conduit. I will have to spare some power to you - yes, girl, I can see that your own affinity is somewhere else. One moment."

Hela held out a long-fingered hand, and the shadows in the room boiled together, scattering away from Hela like blood spatter; where they hit, they solidified, arcing into a complex map of runes centred around Garrison and the Disir. The light in the room dimmed, and the temperature dropped sharply, so that breaths hung in the air for a few moments.

"What is this?" Illyana asked, her voice brittle and high.

Hela did not dignify the question, putting a hand on Illyana's shoulder, flaring cold light into the darkness. The light disappeared for a moment - and then flared again, from Illyana's eyes, a small window into what felt like an endless pool of power. Strings became barely visible between Garrison and the Disir, just visible, and Illyana stepped forward. She hesitated, uncertain, and then the sword in her hand flared to life too, going from a flickering sort of glow to the harsh light of the winter sun.

Illyana swung in a wide arc, cutting the strings.