Nightcrawler receives a mysterious present at his birthday party - a present which suddenly explodes and sucks Nightcrawler's soul out of his body. Professor X asks Doctor Strange to come and assist. Using a magic spell, they follow Nightcrawler to hell, or as Doctor Strange comes to suspect, a clever renditioning of hell. They make their way down to the ninth level, where Amanda Sefton reveals she'd had a hand in this so she could expose Margali Szardos's (her mother's) misconceptions about the death of her eldest son Stefan. Margali sees the truth of Nightcrawler's actions in that affair, and pardons him. The X-Men get returned to the mansion.