[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #5

Wil Alambre wilalambre at gmail.com
Tue Apr 19 07:35:57 PDT 2011


On a filthy cobblestone hell-road outside the infinite walls of
Double-Dis, the Super Wizard From Space stared up at the
triumphant face of the Super-Devil. The monster's massive grin
dribbled thick lava as he shouted out "Hey there, jerks! Welcome
to Double-Hell!"

The super wizard stood up fully and began to glow with an internal
star-fire.

"Oh no you don't!" barked the Super-Devil, and brought his massive
golden pitchfork stabbing down. A booming crunch, the weight of
the enormous weapon knocked the lit shape flat against the
cobblestone, trapped among the three tongs. A stray star-bolt
flickered up along the golden handle, dispersing harmlessly into
the air as the Super-Devil laughed.

"Wow, I didn't actually think this would work!" admitted the
hell-monster. "On your mortal realms, my hell-powers would be at
quarter of their full strength. But if I could somehow trick you
into coming here, to my realm where I'm at my full strength...
well, shit... here in Double-Hell, only the Super-Devil can be
victorious!"

The gloating was interrupted by a weak coughing.

All eyes turned to the grievously wounded Devil, still lying on
his back in a pool of his own hell-blood. With a grit of his
teeth, he finally managed to yank his two-pronged pitchfork out of
his gut, letting it rattle onto the road.

"I almost forgot about you, you little asshole" the Super-Devil
taunted.

Wiping hell-blood out of his mouth with the edge of his ragged red
cape, the Devil slowly managed to work his way to a sitting
position. "I have fulfilled my part... I have delivered you the
Super Wizard From Space. Now release me from my death-punishment.
Let me return to my Hell as we agreed in our bargain."

"Oh! Ha! You mean this?" the Super-Devil chuckled, snapping his
fingers.  A huge sheet of parchment unrolled from nothingness, the
binding hell-power of an infernal contract burning the edges of
the paper. "Ah, but if you read the damned thing, you'd know that
you only get out from Double-Hell after I defeat the Super Wizard
 From Space in the cosmic tournament, in an official cosmic
battle...

"Which I have absolutely no freaking intention of doing!

"He'll be joining you in several particularly excruciating
punishments I've been planning! Why should I risk a fair fight
with him and let you off the hook when I can instead run both of
you morons through a million painful hell-tortures?" the
Super-Devil laughed maniacally.

"You're double-crossing me?"

"Of course I am!" was the reply, sounding almost insulted. "It's
not like this is the first time." { Diabolical Devilman #12 }

With a snap of clawed fingers that echoed like distant thunder,
the flame-licked contract rolled itself up and disappeared. The
Super-Devil sneered in disgust. "What, are you dense? Are you
retarded or something? Who the Double-Hell do you think I am? I'm
the goddamn Super-Devil!"

The Devil looked up at his oversized twin with a pain-filled
stare. "No, I suppose I knew this would happen," he admitted as he
reached into his shorts and pulled out a small piece of paper,
barely the size of a crumpled playing card and smeared illegibly
with ink. He contemplated it, as if holding that simple small
scrap made everything all right.

The Super-Devil narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Whatcha got
there?"

The Devil smiled with a dastardly satisfaction. "Insurance."

The little scrap floated out of of his hand. The edges sparked
with hell-fire.

The Super-Devil's eyes widened. "Oh shit."

The cobblestone road cracked and shattered in orange fireworks.
All three tumbled through a sudden inter-dimensional emptiness,
falling through an infinity while also not falling at all. A heavy
black mist seemed to yank at them, dragging them down past
twenty-one and twenty-four and twenty-seven glome-like dimensions
at faster and faster speeds. Sound was nonexistent, light was
nonexistent, but they could feel the massive wooden gateway, the
chaotic iron wall of the infinite fortress city, all of
Double-Hell that contained it whisked up and out and away from
them.

The black mist didn't so much as give way this time as turn into a
slicing cold rain, slashing down from an angry nighttime sky. All
three crashed into what looked like a swamp on fire, bouncing
violently off petrified stumps and splashing in hot, sickly mud.
No matter their size, no matter how much any of them flailed, none
could seem to find purchase, none could seem to free themselves
from the endless mud. It took all their effort to just keep their
heads above the surface.

"What have you done, you little bastard? What have you done?"
screamed the Super-Devil, belching lava fitfully.

The super wizard managed to wrap his arms around the massive
three-pronged gold pitchfork, clinging to it like a drowning man
would cling to a broken oar. Spitting slush and dirt from his
mouth, wiping muck from his stinging eyes, he saw a wounded form
struggling beside him. Without hesitation, he grabbed onto the red
cape and pulled the Devil to the relative safety of the floating
pitchfork.

"What happened?" the super wizard demanded, yelling to be heard
over the crashing of the slashing rain and cursing of the panicked
Super-Devil.

"I certainly couldn't trust him, now could I?" the Devil replied
between coughs. "So I signed an alternate contract. A backup deal,
just in case."

"Contract? With who? Where are we?"

"Everything can die. Everything. And there is a twice-terrible
place reserved for the denizens of Double-Hell when they pass on,
with punishments and sufferings three-thousand-fold more harrowing
than anything found in their own realm..."

A bubbling appeared in the mire around the thrashing Super-Devil,
a drowned booming from deep underneath the swamp's mud. Five great
pillars of black rock rose up on all sides of him... and then
clutched him as they were revealed to be massive jagged fingers of
a stone hand.

Surfacing from the depths was a gigantic humanoid beast made of
cracked granite and glowing embers. It had armour of jagged cast
iron, two empty eye sockets that each had a burning deer skull for
pupils, and three curving horns protruding from it's forehead. In
one hand it had a massive wooden pitchfork, it's four prongs
dripping crude oil. In the other hand, it squeezed the Super-Devil
like it was a toy.

"WELCOME TO TRIPLE-HELL!" it roared with an evil smile.

The Devil managed to fish his own two-pronged pitchfork from the
swamp mud. Lighting it with a hell-glow, he pointed it at the
Super Wizard From Space. "With the Super-Devil not upholding his
end of the bargain, I'm refusing to uphold mine. I will use my
hell-powers to send you back to the mortal realms."

"What if this new monster also betrays you?"

"Oh, I'm expecting it!" the Devil laughed. "Let's face it, we're
not a trust-worthy lot, are we. That's why I signed more than one
contingency contract. Just in case."

The super wizard only nodded grimly.

A simple crackling came from the Devil's iron weapon, and a
pentagram-shaped hole tore behind the wizard. On the other side
lay the dark cathedral and piled corpses of the alien-cultists
distant world. Then the Devil placed the two prongs on the
wizard's chest and pushed him through the hell-fissure to safety.

The super wizard collapsed on the floor, the dark walls of the
auditorium lit by the morning light filtering down through the
collapsed roof. He was covered in grimy ice, dusty red clay, and
black swamp mud, but alive. He looked up to see the Devil, still
trapped in the terror-swamp of Triple-Hell, giving him a single
friendly wave.

"Good luck in your cosmic tournament, old friend," the Devil said
cheerfully before the portal snapped shut.

.........................................

AUTHOR'S NOTES

When I first started this series, I didn't think I'd do more than
a single issue. Then, when I decided to write more, I figured most
issues would effectively be stand-alone stories. Now I've written
a three parter. So far, this series has been amusingly
unpredictable to write.

One advantage of splitting this issue into two was that I suddenly
found myself ahead of schedule, a situation I believed to be
inconceivable! So this issue and the next one will enjoy a longer
look-over before being posted, some that became extremely useful
as I had to be careful clarifying how similarly-named characters
interacted.

Speaking of the multiple devils, I really had fun with the concept
of the hell of hell, and the hell of hell's hell. Naturally once I
started down that slippery slope, the only thing that stopped me
from going even deeper was clarity. Still, if I manage to keep
writing this for long enough, we will definitely return to this
joke :P

NEXT ISSUE: THE SECRET OF THE SILVER SKULL MACHINE!

.........................................
Wil Alambre, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wilalambre



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