The Silent Stone
Posted on Fri May 16th, 2025 @ 12:52pm by Kurt Wagner & Sarah Mitchell & Pietro Maximoff
3,917 words; about a 20 minute read
Mission:
Episode 6: X-Fernus Agenda
Timeline: January 6th, 1991
The halls of Xavier's School were unusually quiet even for early morning, muffled by fresh snow outside and the long exhale of the holidays behind them. Somewhere faintly, music played—gentle and hesitant, like someone trying not to be heard. It came from a small practice room tucked just off the south wing.
Sarah sat cross-legged on the floor, headphones out, sheet music scattered in a half-moon before her. Her voice came in whispers. She found that studying her music theory notes early in the morning helped her mind process them over the day while she went about her normal activities. It also helped that she knew she needed to keep the noise to a minimum so as not to disturb the rest of the mansion.
A familiar scent of brimstone curled through the air before the soft bamf of teleportation announced Kurt's arrival.
"Forgive my intrusion, Fraulein," came Kurt's voice from behind her, gentle and reverent like he didn’t want to break the moment. "I hope I do not interrupt, but I hef been looking for you everyvhere. Zhere is a mystery and ve need your help to unravel it."
Sarah looked up at Kurt with a mixed look of confusion and surprise. The last thing she'd expected this morning was to be asked for help by one of the members of staff. After a moment of silence, Sarah turned her full body to face Kurt, "um, yea sure, what do you need help with. Or rather, what could I possibly help you with, Mr. Kurt?"
Kurt offered her a hand, his smile gentle. "It vill be easier to show you," he said, with a twinkle in his golden eyes.
Before Sarah could respond with more than a nod, the world snapped into brimstone.
Bamf.
Then again.
Bamf.
And again.
The rush of wind, the sharp scent of sulfur, the strange weightlessness of displacement—each bamf left her breathless, until finally, with one last puff of smoke and a soft thud of their boots against stone—
They were there.
The ancient temple complex spread out before them like something pulled from the memory of a dream. Towering stone spires rose into the gold-tinged sky, their intricate carvings catching the fading sunlight. Lichen and vine crept across the bas reliefs, nature and time embracing the temple in a long, slow dance. The jungle's breath whispered through the trees, rustling the wide leaves with a reverent hush.
The setting sun bathed the world in hues of deep amber and burnt rose. Its last rays shimmered across the reflecting pools that flanked the ancient walkway, sending scattered ripples of light dancing over mossy stones. A pair of cranes took flight in the distance, silhouettes against the dying light, wings stretched in graceful arcs.
Kurt took a shaky breath and braced himself against the edge of a broken column, looking more winded than usual. "Agh… teleporting zis far is… never easy."
Catching her breath for a moment, Sarah looked up and around at the structures that now surrounded them as well as the bushland. This definately wasn't the Americas anymore. In fact, it looked like Myanmar or Thailand, "Far? how far are we talking? This looks like a kind of Buddhist temple or something."
As the last golden slivers of sunlight kissed the temple walls, Kurt pushed off from the weathered column and straightened himself with a quiet grunt, his breath still catching in his chest. He gave Sarah a rueful smile, gesturing ahead. "Ve are very far from home, Fraulein. Zhis is Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Not Buddhist originally, despite vhat many believe."
He motioned for her to follow and began walking down the moss-draped corridor that led into the temple proper. As they entered the cool shadows of the inner sanctum, the air changed, now thick with humidity, incense, and the dust of centuries. The stone corridor narrowed, its floor uneven and slick with condensation. Massive sandstone blocks arched overhead, some crumbled with age, others bearing the weight of a thousand years untouched.
Ancient carvings adorned every surface. Long panels of bas relief unfolded like stories along the walls—serpents coiling through the heavens, celestial warriors riding elephants, and deities standing with outstretched arms, faces serene in divine stillness.
Kurt paused beside one of the larger carvings, his hand trailing lightly across its surface. “You see zis one?” he asked, pointing to the central figure: a four-armed man with a conch, a discus, a mace, and a lotus flower in hand. “Vishnu, ze protector. Hindu god of preservation. Zhis temple vas his, long before ze Buddhists came. Ze monks who followed Buddha merely repurposed vhat had already vithstood ze sands of time."
As they moved deeper into the structure, the carved images shifted in tone—from grand processions and divine battles to stranger, more surreal scenes. Shadows loomed larger here. The figures looked… different. Less stylized. More human. And more afraid.
"Ze original king who built Angkor Wat, Suryavarman ze Second, he vas no fool,” Kurt continued, his voice quiet against the echoing reverberation. "No doubt he discovered something here. Beneath all zhis lies a far older structure. A vault or tomb, perhaps. He built Angkor above it as a cover, wrapping divine vorship around a secret."
Sarah's gaze darted to the walls as they passed. Even without words, the shifting artwork told a story: the great god descending from the heavens… something monstrous sealed away… a door, a key.
Kurt came to a stop at a nondescript stone recess set into the back of the temple’s deepest hall. Thick creepers hung around it, and time-worn bricks framed a blank stone wall.
"Here," Kurt said softly, pointing down the hidden staircase now revealed.
Beyond it: blackness. A staircase spiraling down into the earth. Cool, damp air surged upward like the exhale of something that had been asleep for far too long.
Kurt glanced at Sarah with a flicker of solemnity in his gaze. "Zhis… is vhere it gets interesting."
“This is where it gets dangerous.” A silver haired figure said from behind them, his swift feet allowing him to arrive in silence. “I didn’t find any other ways in. If this is the only entrance I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be booby trapped.”
Quickly spinning around, Sarah looked over the new arrival, "who are you and where did you come from?" she asked, glancing over at Kurt for a moment. She hadn't expected to find someone else in this place, let alone someone who spoke perfect English.
Kurt chuckled softly at Sarah's startled question. "Forgive me, Fraulein. Zhis is Pietro Maximoff. He is my—how do you say?—co-conspirator in zhis little expedition. Und he is also ze twin brother of Wanda... whom we are trying to find."
Pietro offered a quick, sarcastic salute.
"He takes some time but you vill get used to him," Kurt added, motioning between them with a smirk. "Wanda vould probably tell him to be nice to anosther redhead." He glanced sideways at Sarah. "You do have a striking resemblance to Vanda. Ze both of you hef ze the same look, like you're wearing your hair as a crown."
Pietro scoffed at Kurt’s compliments. “My sister would tell you to stop buttering up the underage students that you recruited from your school.” He was in no mood for Kurt’s sugary words especially when they were geared towards his missing twin. “Besides Wanda isn’t even a redhead, her hair is brown. She colored it when we were in the circus, but stopped once we left. Not that you would know that…”
Quicksilver’s attention turned towards the teenager that had been brought on their mission. She seemed a lot more green than some of the others. “I’m just trying to warn you that this place is dangerous, don’t touch anything unless you have to.”
Sarah nodded, "Noted. Have you been here before Mr Maximoff? You sound like you know a lot about this place" she asked as she gave the room a look around again. She'd never seen anything like this in person before, only in pictures in geography textbooks in school.
“Did you grow up under a rock?” Pietro sneered at her ignorance in a moment of Lehnsherr pride that was ingrained into his DNA. “Let’s just say that I’m more than familiar with a dangerous scenario, I can tell when someplace is going to be hazardous.” He looked over at Kurt, the same sneer remaining “I suppose you want me to go first?”
Sarah gave Pietro an expression that could only be described as 'who the hell does he think he is'. While this was her first adventure with Kurt to some strange place, the last thing she expected was to have to put up with someone's ego. Giving a groan of annoyance, she turned away and started looked around at the temple.
Kurt, ever the diplomat—and perhaps more importantly, far more patient—chose not to rise to Pietro's jabs. Instead, he offered Sarah an encouraging smile and gestured toward the vaulted, echoing chamber that unfurled ahead of them in shadow and stone.
At the bottom, he pointed toward the great wall at the far end of the chamber—a gently concave structure etched with elaborate carvings and glimmering faintly in the mossy light.
"Zhis chamber..." Kurt began, walking forward as his voice softened into thoughtful cadence. "Zhe curvature of ze walls, ze way sound carries..." He paused and clapped his hands together once—sharp, the sound rebounding with surprising clarity.
"It has ze qualities of a parabolic resonance shell—somezing like an amphitheater but enclosed. Every sound here is preserved, prolonged, like a chant in a great cathedral." He tapped the heel of his boot lightly. "Zhe echo is... almost pure. No distortion. Und zhis vall—" He gestured again at the vast, sealed surface shaped like overlapping petals. "—eet hums, just slightly. A resonance, as if it's listening."
He turned back toward Sarah, the intensity in his golden eyes unmistakable. "I zhink zhis vault opens not vith force, nor vith a key, but vith sound. Perhaps a chant. Perhaps a pitch. Ze monks who lived here long ago, before even zhe Khmer Empire, they vould haf known ze tones needed. Ze script hints at it, zhough eet is unclear to me."
"Resonance? so it reacts to a specific sound frequency" Sarah clarified as she looked around at the chamber. "Mr Kurt, you said something about a script?"
Kurt nodded at Sarah’s clarification, but gestured with one hand as if to temper the phrasing. "Ja, but more zhan just frequency. Resonance is ze harmony of a tone reverberating in ze perfect space. Zhis whole chamber is designed to receive sound like a sacred vessel."
He turned toward the far wall, where the faint bioluminescence shimmered just enough to draw the eye. The mural carved there pulsed with an eerie life of its own, as if echoing some long-forgotten melody. Strange, curving symbols snaked across the stone in whorls and spirals, forming an array that seemed like a confusing jumble until one stood still and stared long enough.
Kurt stepped closer, brushing dust from the stone with a reverent hand. "I say 'script,' but zhis... it is not writing in ze usual sense. Not notation, like ve know it. Not European stave or clef. Eet resembles none of ze music systems I am familiar vith."
He tilted his head, tracing a line of symbols with a slow fingertip. "But zhe scrollwork here... zhe flow of it. Eet moves like a chant. Like a melody laid in stone." He motioned to a band of Khmer inscriptions nestled alongside the older hieroglyphs. "Zhis here, zhis inscription is Khmer. I recognize it, but do not understand ze language. Zhe rest? Ancient. Pre-Khmer. Eet is older zhan any civilization ve know of on record."
Kurt stepped back, his golden eyes turning to Sarah with a sudden glint of curiosity. "Tell me, Sarah. How versed are you in musical theory?"
Walking over to stand beside Kurt, Sarah looked over the wall carvings, "I know a little." She said, looking at the scrollwork, trying to make sense of it. "Could this be some sort of musical note series? like an old song?"
Kurt smiled at her—small but genuine, the kind of expression that meant he was impressed but also deeply hopeful.
"Ja," he said, stepping back to give her room. "I zhink you are exactly right. Zhis... zhis may be a song. A key in melody, not metal."
He gestured broadly at the wall with a sweep of his hand. "Eef you can make any sense of eet, Sarah, you are velcome to try. You haf a keener voice zhan I, and perhaps..." His voice softened, almost to a whisper, "perhaps zhe stone vill remember."
The chamber felt impossibly still then, as if the air itself were listening.
Looking over the walls, Sarah focused in on the scrollwork. The lines looked similar enough to a western style stave, but only if you squinted at it. "hmm, if only I'd brought some paper and a pencil." she mused before turning to her two companions, "Long shot, but do either of you have a piece of chalk on you?"
"Ah, no, but vait ein moment." Kurt vanished in a bamf, though reappeared before the first brimstone cloud fully dissipated. In his hand was a torch long spent. "Ze... how you say... charcoal?" He broke off the burned head of the torch and handed it to Sarah. "Eet vould serve as good as chalk, ja?"
Taking the charcoal, Sarah shrugged, "yea, it'll do" she said before clearing away a spot on the floor and starting to draw out a music stave. Looking around the room, Sarah paid close attention to the scrollwork, taking note of where on the lines the dots sat. After a few minutes, Sarah stepped back to look at her work, "it's a score....."
"But can you sing it?" Pietro cut right to the chase with his question as he continued to impatiently tap his foot while she worked.
"Give her a moment, Pietro." Kurt held up his hand on Sarah's behalf, as he could see her thinking intently.
Sarah’s face twisted in a mix of concern and panic. In theory yes she could sing it, but without control of her gift she might as well be bringing the ruins down around them. After a shaky breath in, Sarah turned to Kurt, “Do I have to sing?”
"Fraulein Sarah, I zhink you may be ze only person who can sing," Kurt replied. "Try. Bitte."
Looking between Kurt and Pietro, Sarah felt a great deal of unease about this. Clearly, this was the only way, but she wished there was anything else she could do. Swallowing her nerves, she put on the bravest smile she could muster, "Ok, but can you and Mr. Maximoff please wait outside? I don't want to hurt either of you" she said, before she turned her full attention to the score she'd written on the floor. She'd learnt to sight read for the piano, so she was somewhat sure she could sing the right notes.
"Dintre toți proștii..." Pietro dissolved into his native tongue as his temper continued to rise but he calmed himself after thinking about the real reason they were here. His twin was missing and he would have to play nice if he wanted her back. "Fine!" He threw his hands up in the air and marched out of the room, "This better work!"
Waiting for the two of them to step outside of the chamber, Sarah took in a deep breath and slowly released it in an attempt to recenter herself. Come on Sarah, you can do this. Focus on your breathing, breath control. she thought to herself as she read over the music she'd written. Listening to the notes in her head, Sarah started to hum then to herself, trying to make sure the notes were correct.
After a few moments, Sarah started to sing the notes, quietly at first and then slowly increasing her volume as she became more and more confident.
As Sarah’s voice rose with each carefully placed note, the chamber responded like a living instrument. Her song resonated in the air—not just echoing, but harmonizing with something deeper, embedded in the walls themselves. Vibrations hummed through the stone, and with a low, grinding shift, the wall in front of her began to move.
The carved staves slid apart, revealing not another room, but a towering, intricate structure of interlocking cubes—like a Rubik’s cube the size of a small car. Each block was inscribed with ancient sigils and glowed faintly with the echo of Sarah’s voice. As she sustained a long, rich note, the entire construct rotated with a fluid grace, its individual pieces lifting and shifting in rhythm with her pitch and tone.
Outside the chamber, Kurt’s eyes widened as the vibrations reached him.
“Mein Gott…” he breathed, then turned quickly to Pietro. “Zhis is it. She’s doing it!”
He bamfed inside just as a glowing cube rotated outward, opening a passage for only a few seconds before closing again with a sharp click.
“Sarah, do not stop!” Kurt called as he leapt forward, teleporting mid-air to land on one of the lower platforms of the shifting structure. The heatless energy radiating from it tugged at his every nerve, and each note Sarah sang altered the tempo of the shifting blocks.
Another bamf—and he was halfway up the construct, narrowly avoiding being crushed as one of the sections snapped shut behind him.
“You’ve got it! Just like zat, steady!” he shouted over his shoulder, trusting that she could hear him.
The vault was opening—he could feel it. The blocks were forming a pattern, a sequence, one he could navigate if only Sarah kept singing. As he reached the topmost ledge, a square slot revealed itself in the center. Only a pedestal with a relic resting upon it.
Kurt leaned in to examine it, his tail coiling for balance.
Down below, Sarah’s voice trembled slightly with strain, but the structure was responding still, almost quaking now now, pulsing in harmony with her voice.
Kurt looked down and called out, "Sarah, you did it! But hurry und wind it down. I zhink ve triggered somesthingk else!"
There was a rumble far below. A deeper sound. The mechanism had opened the vault but now it was going into overdrive. The entire temple began to hum with the amplified resonance of Sarah's song bouncing back and forth through the recessed structure.
Singing out a few last notes, Sarah collapsed to her knees, breathing heavily with her throat feeling sore. As she sat there, she thought to herself that she really should've warmed up before trying something like that, but she didn’t want to let Kurt down after he put so much trust in her. Putting her hands up to her throat, Sarah swallowed a few times, wincing at the pain as what little saliva she could produce burned her raw throat.
The shifting substrate began to spin faster—too fast. The final note of Sarah's song wavered as the shifting cubes above pulsed with light, the mechanism entering some kind of feedback loop. The hum became a roar, and the air in the chamber quaked with residual sound still resonating off the walls.
Kurt's golden eyes snapped up. "Nein—it's collapsing!"
With one last nimble leap, he bamfed through the tightening gaps in the construct, vanishing a breath before the final cube sealed shut with a thunderous clunk. A shockwave of silence followed.
And then BAMF!
He reappeared beside Sarah in a swirl of sulfurous mist, crouched low and grinning, the relic shard held tightly in one gloved hand. It glowed faintly with an azure hue, veins of pulsing energy still flickering through its jagged surface.
"You did it!" Kurt exclaimed, dropping to one knee beside her, his expression one pure joy. "You really did it!" He held the relic aloft just slightly, as if showing it to her was part of the reward. "Zhis... zhis is because of you, Fraulein.” His tail swayed with enthusiasm. "Ve could not hef done zis wisthout your voice und your bravery. You vere wunderbar!"
Giving Kurt a nod, Sarah’s face was a mix of exhaustion and amazement, “I did it….? I did it? I did it!” She said, the excitement in her voice growing with each repetition. She had felt her power stir within her chest while she was singing, but she had focused on the notes she needed to sing and the boom didn’t come. Quickly jumping up, she wrapped her arms around Kurt, holding him tightly for a moment before pulling back, “thank you, Mr. Kurt, i can’t believe it…”, she said in a slightly raspy voice as she her eyes fell on the object in his hand, “what is that?”
As Kurt opened his mouth to answer Sarah’s question about the glowing shard in his hand, a low, ragged cough echoed from behind them.
Both of them turned.
"Pietro?" Kurt's brow furrowed. The celebratory glow in his expression evaporated instantly.
At the far edge of the chamber, near a shallow depression etched with concentric inscriptions, Pietro Maximoff was slumped halfway against the wall—one arm hanging limp, his body twitching faintly like a frayed live wire. A partially completed rubbing lay beside him, crushed beneath his side. The parchment was smudged with dust... and something darker.
"Mein Gott—" Kurt vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke and reappeared beside him, crouched low, one hand already reaching for Pietro’s shoulder. His tail snapped behind him with sudden urgency. "Pietro! Are you..." He stopped himself as he got a better look.
Pietro's breath was shallow, his skin pallid with a bluish tint at the lips. His temple was scraped, hair matted to a forming bruise, and his right side was already beginning to swell under the ribs.
Kurt placed a hand gently on Pietro’s forehead. “I told you to vatch from ze door yet you obviously tried to help vhen ze structure began to rotate." His eyes flicked to the indentations on the stone wall nearby, places where the mechanism had clearly shifted outward, catching anything in its way. "Be quicker next time, mein Freund."
Quickly climbing over the rubble, Sarah made her way over to the two of them, "see, this is what happens when I sing. People get hurt....I'm sorry, Mr. Pietro," she said, kneeling down beside him.
"Nein, Freulein," Kurt said with a shake of his head. "You did nosthingk wrong. Ve could not hef done zhis visthout you. But let us leave zhis place. Let us not tempt fate any furzher, ja?"
Giving Kurt a half smile, Sarah moved around to the other side of Pietro to help lift him up if need, "can you jump us out of here, Mr. Kurt?"
"Ja, Fraulein. Take mein hand." Kurt held them both tight and made ready to bamf. "Auf Wiedersehen, Angkor Vhat."
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