DISCLAIMER: Magneto, Exodus, and all related characters belong to Marvel Comics. You know the drill. They are not mine, and no money is being made. I am only borrowing them for the story.

NOTE: This will reference events that were in my last Exodus/Black Knight what if? story "Barbarians at the Gate." It isn't necessary to have the read the first story in order to understand this one. It can stand alone.

A gauntleted fist smacked onto the metal walls which made a tinny counterpoint to the man's booted feet pacing the length of the floor. He'd been brooding for the last five hours and showed no signs of letting up any time soon. He recoiled from the blow and rocked back on his heels, and held his right hand in his left, slowly tugging the guantlet off, one finger at a time.

He regarded his reflection in the mirror smooth metal walls; silver shoulder length hair, metallic blue eyes, and the crimson armor he wore more and more often. It had been many years since his appearance had mattered that much to him; just as long as he projected an image of control, of power, of authority to those who followed him.

"My kind," Magneto muttered to himself, tossing the helmet onto a nearby table in the center of the room. He stared at the helmet for a few seconds, then turned his heel thinking about how long he had been banging his head and bending his will against the invisible wall of fear and hatred that separated man from mutant. He mentally kicked himself for the feeling of rare nostalgia that swept over him, like a man with an amputated leg that feels a phantom pain even though the lost limb is no longer there. He thought back to an event that took place years ago...

flashback

Magneto floated through the air in the green halo of a magnetic force bubble by shaping and manipulating the surrounding magnetic fields that he could draw on, and sources even farther away. He never bothered to look down, three hundred feet above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the sky overcast with clouds, all that was immaterial. Why bother? he'd asked himself. In a back corner of his mind he felt the lines of force he pulled into and wrapped around himself. These forces allowed him to cross miles of air and ocean without even breaking a sweat. Some part of him wanted to drop the shield and let the wind whip through his hair. However that would remind him that despite his power, he was still human enough to feel wind shear and sweat pouring down his back from the amount of pressure exerted, from the power he was expending. He didn't care. Without any visible indication of why he chose one particular spot in the ocean as opposed to another, he hovered in mid-air and reached down with his magnetic powers and found the USS Leningrad nuclear submarine.

He used his powers to lock onto it, and sent a magnetic pulse wave through its computer circuitry to cripple the ship.

Meanwhile

The Leningrad cut through the frigid waters of the Sargasso Sea. Her captain quietly fumed to himself about the inevitable delay caused by bureaucratic red tape, to get the vessel retrofitted and seaworthy. 'When the Soviet Union dissolved and gave up all its former territories and there's been nothing but excuses ever since.' he thought to himself. As far as he was concerned it as was Mother Russia which he loyally served. With that in mind, he steepled his fingers in front of him and leaned back in the captain's chair, giving the operations room and its crew a 360 degree inspection. Then he stood up and walked over to stand next to the navigator.

"What's our present speed?"

The man looked up, and replied, "Twenty knots, Sir."

"Good."

"Sir, we're picking up an atmospheric disturbance coming from the surface, on the radar. At a distance of 50 miles and closing," the sonar technician announced.

"Are we under attack?" the captain asked.

The technician bent down and scanned the instruments on his control console. "It might be some kind up blow-up on the surface. If so we could probably dive lower and let it blow itself out."

"And if it isn't?" the captain asked.

All of a sudden, every electronic system on the ship: from computer consoles, to conduits, to the artificial lighting, and the life-support; sparked, shorted, and began emitting an incoherent babble of electronic squeaks as the entire system went haywire.

One of the technicians threw his up his hands in disgust. "There's nothing we can do, Sir."

"We're dead in the water," another panicked sailor muttered.

"Captain, you were right! We are under attack!" shouted the sailor manning the periscope.

Magneto used his powers to yank the vessel up through several meters of water, until its prow was half in the water and half out of it. The sheer stress being placed on it, caused the ship's flanks to stave in and poured in gallons of water, as the crew abandoned ship, clinging to the ship's sides, and then he watched as they slid into the ocean and disappeared from sight.

Still maintaining his magnetic grip on the vessel, he crunched it, like so much tinfoil. As he let his hold slop, he watched as the vessel sank beneath the waves. Then it was all over, except for the shouting...

present day

"I'd like to open up a discussion," Magneto said by way of greeting as he entered the common room, where Pietro Maximoff, most often referred to as Quicksilver, was brooding, staring out the floor-length windows; and for him, found standing as perfectly still as graven image in stone. "Am I interrupting anything?" he asked mock seriously.

"Father," Pietro said, crossing his arms over his chest, "don't take this the wrong way, but you're the last person I wanted, or needed to be giving me 'fatherly advice.'"

"Bitter are we?" Magneto muttered to himself. "Perhaps you need to take your mind off things, and concentrate of something more pleasant." He walked over towards a cedar bookcase that leaned up against the far wall between the niche formed by wall and the floor lamp. He picked up wooden stand carved along its four sides with scrollwork, which had a marble tabletop, with sixty four matching black and white squares.

"Chess? Pietro asked. raising one silver eyebrow.

"I trust you are familiar with the game?"

"Are you mocking me?" Pietro demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

"Not at all," he said as he took the game board and its stand and placed it next to the recessed seating unit. He undid a latch on the stand which uncovered a hidden compartment, and removed a box that held the playing pieces. Without seeming hurry he removed each piece and placed them in their starting positions. That done, he took the position directly opposite the black pieces, leaving the white pieces to him. Once that was done, he waved his hand as a tacit invitation for Pietro to come over and join him in a game.

"Your move," he invited.

Pietro ground his teeth and muttered under his breath, "Might as well humor the 'old man'" and accordingly took the seat opposite the white pieces.

Randomly choosing one of the pawns in the front rank, he moved it forward two spaces, two clear a path for the rook and the knight. He knew enough about the basics of chess, to know that the most common opening move was usually the pawn in front of the king, but he was feeling perverse today, and decided to go for introducing random elements in the game, if the other man insisted on playing that he simply didn't have the patience to sit still long enough to deal with it. The other man countered with moving the pawn in front of the queen one square forward, then leaned back in his chair.

Pietro countered by moving the his knight to adjacent square where he would be in position to capture on his next turn.

Magneto responded by moving pawn in the left-hand corner forward one square, which put the white bishop, on the verge of capturing his pawn or the black knight.

"At any given point in the game each piece is working toward a capture. You must play both defensively and offensively. Ask yourself after each of your opponents moves, "What piece is vulnerable now" And at the same time, "Where can I move to threaten my opponent?"

"You haven't breathed a word of exactly what you wanted to discuss," Pietro interrupted.

"As you have no doubt suspected, more than just playing chess, or discussing its finer points, I wanted to use the game to illustrate a point."

"Like what?" Pietro demanded.

"More than just a game, from ancient times, many military leaders have been more than just passing fond of this game, because of the inherent for developing strategy which can then be employed in warfare."

"I figured there was an ulterior motive, I just couldn't put my finger on when you would come out with it."

"In the contest between opposing armies the same principles apply using both strategy and tactics as in war. The same foresight and powers of calculation are necessary for deriving the plans of your opponent."

"And what has this to do with me?"

"Well, I was speaking metaphorically, of course, but I'll let you figure that out for yourself."

Just then, Magneto took his attention off the game and glanced at the bank of monitors that lined the walls, to watch the news report.

"This is Michael Gayern of the Global News Network. I'm standing on a plateau in the Swiss Alps, where a day ago, a party of rock climbers came across a remarkable discovery. It appears to be a man caught in a state of suspended animation. What is even more remarkable is that fact that it appears he hails from several hundred years in the past, if the style, cut and markings of the tattered uniform of a Knights Templar from the 2nd Crusades is any indication. Also..."

Whatever else he may have added was lost by a rapid-fire static of electrical 'snow.'

"I will check this out personally," Magneto said, holding a black rook poised over the game board, and then dropping it with a thud to the ground.

"Why?" Pietro demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

"In chess as in life, when people cannot figure out what you are doing, they are kept in a state of terror; they remain uncertain, confused," Magneto said, then turned on his heel and strode out of the room, his cape fluttering behind him.

"I guess, I've never had the patience to learn this game," Pietro said mock-severely and hurled the carved ivory piece of a rook into the wall, where it shattered. In a blur of motion, he swept up the broken pieces, discarded it, and reset the remaining pieces on the marble board, all accomplished in seconds. "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother any more. I doubt he'd even miss me if I was gone when he gets back..."

Magneto landed on the plateau that lead up to the entrance of the ravine. The entrance was a jagged gash in the stony skin of the mountain, roughly two meters in height and less than that in width. In flash of atypical hindsight, he realized that he should have brought a torch or at least a flashlight along to light the way. As it was, it was fortunate that the news crew had left a few torches burning in makeshift wall brackets, probably in the event they were planning on returning to the site.

Their fuel was starting to run day, but the cracks in the stone of the cave let in enough of the outside sunlight to see by, and navigated his way carefully. There were other paths that branched off from the main one, but he ignored them. He watched where he placed his feet to avoid tripping into the pitted cracks that pockmarked the cave floor.

It could have been hours that had elapsed, it just a handful of minutes before he came across what had drawn him here. Just inside of a natural crevice that had been carved into the rock wall by centuries of erosion and cave formation; was a crystal case which made reminded him briefly of that of all things, it looked similar to the ancient sarcophagus that the ancient Egyptians had used to entomb their pharaohs. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence, but he was willing to let that pass without comment for the moment.

The man inside the casket, was dressed in the tattered remains of a Knight Templar uniform: a red surcoat with a white cross, with a white tunic underneath. The broken shaft of a unmarked sword with a gold basket shaped hilt lay poking out of the worn leather scabbard that hung from his hip.

He hadn't paid that much attention to history, but in their own way the Templars had been as blindingly forsworn to 'cleansing' of undesirables as the Nazis were centuries later. That was a incident that he cared to dwell on and brushed it aside, as something immaterial.

Magento dropped to one knee next to the casket. He palmed the glowing sphere of energy over the top of the glass, and by its faint light he could that the encased inside was breathing, shallowly, but the slow rise and fall of his chest indicated that he was alive. Breaking the glass seemed as good a place to start as any. In flash of hindsight, it occurred to him that it would have been easier to carry a torch along, but it was too late to do anything about that now. With his free hand, he curled it into a fist and smashed through the glass casket. To his surprise, his hand went right through like it was made of water and not glass.

The man sat bolt upright, staring around in bewilderment, as if confused to find himself there. It was just as well, Magneto thought, that were no overhanging stalagmites otherwise he would have hit his head, and it would have drawn blood.

He stepped out of the casket, glass shard crunching underneath the worn soles of his black boots, the leather cracked and muddy. His skin was pale as the underside of a fish's belly and of his pupils black eyes were dilated, he looked like death warmed over.

"Not surprising, I suppose, " Magneto muttered aloud to himself while doing some mental calculations, 'considering that about eight hundred years have passed while he's been sealed up in this ravine." Out loud, he remarked: "Welcome back to the land of the living,'" with a tight-lipped ironic smile.

"Are you an angel or a demon?" the man asked.

A slight thinning of the lips was all he allowed himself in terms of a smile, but it was enough. "To answer your. question, son, I've been called worse, but let me assure, I am neither of those. You may call me Magneto. Do you have a name?"

"I had a name once, but it was long ago. I doubt that has much meaning anymore, to anyone but me Benet du Paris. What year is it?"

"If you must know, it's the 20th century," Magneto replied.

"I owe you my life."

"Let's get out of here. And we'll discuss just how you will be able to repay the debt, shall we?" Magneto invited.

"This is oddly familiar. He squinted in the brittle afternoon sunlight, as he eyes slowly adjusted from the darkness of the ravine.

"What do you recall of your life before you were sealed up in there?"

"It was shortly after one of the most disastrous wars fought by the Knights Templar in Outremer, at the Horns of Hattin?" Benet mused, cocking his head to one side as it thinking something through. He brushed tendrils of raven black hair away from his eyes. As he did so he looked down at a strand that he had unnoticed, caught between thumb and forefinger of his left hand. It reminded him of his best friend, Eobar Barrington's ebony blade and his mind drifted back to Jerusalem, the knights called Outremer.

flashback

"Benet you will be granted power like you've never dreamed, but in order to keep the power you must take the head of your closest friend with his own ebony blade," Shareed said.

"Why must I kill Eobar?"

Benet was drunk on power and hefted the ebony blade, holding it out parallel to the floor. The cold hilt rubbed against his flushed and skin, for a moment breaking him out the feverish trance he had fallen into. He flinched from the what he perceived as the look of jealousy and hatred on Eobar's face. Suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to kill and slashed wildly at him.

Shareed tossed Eobar a blade that had once belonged to Benet and broken by the Scarab. Eobar was too preoccupied fending off Benet's wilder swings to concern himself with how the blade had been made whole again. They circled one another as Shareed shrieked madly at the sight of blood gushing from the cut on his upper arm. When Eobar slipped on the beaten earth floor of the chamber, Benet used the opening in Eobar's guard to him to his knees. He raised the ebony blade above his head, the muscles in his arms quivering with inheld strain. As he was just about toe deliver the coup de grace, he looked down at Eobar's face.

"I am not afraid to die," he whispered, the words rattling in his throat.

Almost every fibre of his being told him he wanted to keep the power that was offered, but he heard that final whispered declaration and something in the back of his mind snapped; he couldn't do it. He flung the sword away, then whirled around to confront Shareed. "I deny you! I will not succumb to temptation! I will not kill Eobar!"

"Ungrateful wretch!" Shareed muttered, as the planes of his face began melting like candle wax, his body stretched and elongated, underneath a tall man was revealed with cat-slit eyes and black hair. With a snap of his fingers the chamber, the mountains disappeared, and the two men lost consciousness.

present day

"So, you didn't kill him?" Magneto remarked, after listening to Benet rattle off the events that led up to his confinement in the ravine. "Why not."

"Because I couldn't. Because it would have been giving into temptation. And that was exactly what En Sabh Nur wanted," Benet replied.

"As your first act of loyalty, I will require a demonstration of your power," Magneto said. "Concentrate. In fact, shut out all external stimuli and just focus on your power."

Benet felt again the same energy coursing through his veins; as wave of dizziness swept over him, that if not for the other silver haired man standing next to him hadn't steadied with the tight grip on his arm, that he would have been swept over the edge of the plateau and gone crashing down the mountain's side. He felt less and less reluctance not to allow the power full rein. The white hot energy played about his clenched fists and from a source deep inside of him it lanced out of hands like a seeking searchlight for a target, which streaked across the intervening space and pierced through the center of a peak. For a few heart stopping seconds the light was too glaringly bright to look at it, as the entire area was filled with an ear piercing white hot noise that threatened to burst their eardrums. When it subsided somewhat, it blasted the side of the peak.

At the start, a slab broke off the main mass, fracturing into bits and pieces. Gaining speed, the descending mass of ice and snow broke up into a river of flowing snow, generating a cloud of snow dust roiling around in every direction. Inside the avalanche the dense core picked up even more snow as it accelerated in strength and speed, propelling a blast before it. They watched it descend down the mountain slope, tearing trees and shrubs loose format their moorings in the rock; seemingly not even impeded by the the steel snow bridges that had been designed to stabilize snow packs before they built into monster slides.

For a few seconds, Benet truly thought that the avalanche would go on forever, but at the half-way point, the tumult of ice and snow ran out of steam, and blew itself out.

"I believe this would be considered rather ironic, but under the circumstances," Magneto began," I think you will require a new name, on more appropriate for the times." nodding his head in tacit approval of the outcome of 'test.'

"What did you have in mind, my lord?" Benet asked, wiping sweat from his brow, feeling as wrung out as horse that had been run to ground and was on its last legs.

"Bring me your sword," Magneto said, turning his attention from the aborted avalanche to the sword in his scabbard.

Benet nodded and pulled the sword from the scabbard, the leather crinkling with age, the cold metal hilt clinking along his side. He handed it to Magneto.

"Kneel," he said.

Benet knelt, his head bowed. The position was familiar because he had sworn similar oaths when he was inducted into the knightly order of the Templars. In the back of his mind, it occurred to him, that it could be considered the close of a circle. because he had been drifting in a endless fog for the last eight hundred years, while the world spun on without him. That was finally coming to an end. Perhaps the time of the Templars had passed them by, that was part of his life that no longer had any meaning. With a certain kind of tradition with the ceremony of dubbing him with a new name. Like Magneto had said, there was a balance and symmetry to it.

Magneto lifted the sword and held it parallel to the ground, then it occurred to him that he didn't know how to go about conducting this kind of knighting ceremony. In the back of his mind, he wondered that the man kneeling in front of him had far more experience with knighting ceremonies than he did, but he felt that it was something that needed to be done. Turning the blade around to its blunt edge rather than the cutting edge, he tightened his grip around the gold basket shaped hilt, and sucked in deep lungful of the crisp mountain air. That done, he lightly tapped Benet three times on both the left and right shoulder in three successive taps. "Henceforth, Exodus shall the name you are known by. Let it be so." Then dropped the sword to the ground.

"My Lord," the man now called Exodus whispered. "I am honored to serve you. May I be worthy of your trust."

"Get off your knees, Exodus. I require hard work from my followers, not adulation."

Later

"Now that's done, I think you should discard your sword, symbolic of severing the ties to your old life, the irony wasn't lost on the newly dubbed Exodus.

"Oddly enough, that's the same thing En Sabh Nur said, when ordered me to take Eobar's head," Exodus remarked. "I suppose this would be considered a rather belated twist of fate, that centuries later since I am cutting all ties to my old life by discarding the sword, in a symbolic fashion rather than by shedding the blood of man who was my friend and fellow knight."

He slowly slid the sword from its sheath, tearing the leather even further than it already was. He held it parallel to the ground for a moment, staring at the notched cutting edge. Magneto watched as flickering emotions flashed across the other man's face. The newly dubbed Exodus turned the sword over and over in his hands, then with an angry heave of his arm, threw the sword down the ravine side.

They followed the sword's tumbling descent as it spiralled down the slope with slightly less momentum than the avalanche had moments earlier.

"One thing I do not understand, why is it necessary in this time, to adopt an alias, as it were?"

"Because, as I explained, you and are I not alone. There are others like us, those gifted with strange and unusual abilities. We're called mutants. I know that you have concept of what that word means, or what has happened in the last eight hundred years, but the balance of power has shifted. And those with power, are feared, hated, and misunderstood."

"You are working to change all that?" Exodus asked.

"Yes." Magneto nodded. "Now, I think it's time we left this place. And for what it's worth, I think this is just the beginning of great things."