Nightcrawlers #3 (2023)

Year 1000 Mother Righteous narrates from her ship, summarizing the acquisition of still more magical relics for the Reliquary Perilous - Silver Mercator seizing Infinity Dust from Loki variants, Auntie Fortune winning the guts of the Peregrine Child in a card game, and a Phoenix egg that the Brood and a group of Jamie Madrox clones were warring over. She lets on that the Reliquary Perilous has actually been complete “for ages”. She refers to the generations of Nightcrawler-based clones that trust her and have faith in her as the “oil to grease the trigger” of the weapon. A follower approaches her asking for a blessing and also expresses concerns of hearing of the apostate and a false patriarch and confesses he is experiencing doubt. She blesses him and he thanks her - thereby fueling her - and he dies by trying to teleport into the shielded Moira lab like so many others have before him. Mother Righteous' ship is revealed to be an Ego-level evolved Doctor Nemesis. Nemesis lets on that they found the location of Sinister's protected Moira lab because her followers carried his spores into the World Farm on their suicide missions. He informs her that Sinister has arrived at the lab and that the “Diamond Empress” snaps at his heels and the Brotherhood of Mutants holds him captive. Nemesis openly ponders whether Mother Righteous has "missed her chance". She notes that although Sinister is there, he can't get in the hangar to kill the clone and reset the timeline. Mother Righteous recounts that Destiny stole the Moira clones to preserve the current timeline and give Mystique the longest life possible. Mother Righteous banked on the idea that Mystique's time would eventually run out and that Destiny would then try and reset the timeline to have more time with Mystique. Mother Righteous says that Destiny tried to reset the timeline herself but failed, but thinks she had a Plan B. Doctor Nemesis soon informs her that an object is on trajectory towards the Moira engine. Mother Righteous puts out a call to all her followers to try and teleport into the Moira engine and they attempt this, but the shield holds. She then sees Galactus, who has been infected with the collected spirits of vengeance. Then Juggernaut, who had been used as a bullet 1,000 years ago, appears and goes through Galactus' head and into the shielded Moira engine. The shield barely remains and Mother Righteous requests that Auntie Fortune sacrifice herself to finish it off. She hesitatingly complies and succeeds in eliminating the last of the shield. As Mother Righteous approaches the clones, Vox Ignis asks if the Reliquary Perilous required all this death and horror. She responds that they are actually at the Reliquary Perilous - a place of martyrdom, of self-sacrifice and faith from her generations of followers. But one of her orbs transforms into a heart-shaped “holy virus” forged from the gathered powerful artifacts. This virus is a temporal contagion that will infect its way along a dying timeline to its source-moment. But it also carries with it whatever power, information, or magical actions the conjurer has encoded into it. Mother Righteous' ultimate goal was never to just end the timeline, it was to revert to the beginning of the timeline with more information. All her questions of people's regrets and their secrets - she will be sending that information back to herself to benefit from once the timeline resets. Vox Ignis laments the wasted lives and experiences that would be erased upon the resetting of the timeline. Mother Righteous tells him he merely served her and he can serve her one last time, as the virus needs more power. She sucks the power of the Spirit of Variance from him, leaving a husk of a man. Righteous then focuses on the navigation system for the virus - a mind to steer the payload, a “radiant soul” untouched by the Sinister strain. She summons the Golden Child of Wagnerine, with little concern that the virus will cause the child “to burn to astral dust”. Suddenly, Wagnerine appears and attacks Mother Righteous. Righteous hits back with the relic, incapacitating Wagnerine. She tells Wagnerine that each time she thanked her, it gave her dominion over Wagerine's soul and flesh. While Mother Righteous is gloating, Banshee slices her leg with a knife. Furious, she is about to kill Banshee but while distracted, Wagnerine impales Mother Righteous with her tail blade. Wagnerine continues to stab a downed Mother Righteous, but Banshee warns her she doesn't have much time. Wagnerine wonders what there is time for, as all they lived through can be undone in an instant. She reunites with her child, and as Banshee tells her that “nothing matters so much as being in charge of your own story before the end”, she teleports away. Moira MacTaggert then walks into the lab, grabs the heart virus, shoots Banshee in the head, and eyes the Moira clone in the tank.