[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #28: To Hell And Hell And Hell And Hell And Hell And Back Again, Part 4

[Scott Eiler]

On 4/4/2012 10:09 AM, Wil Alambre wrote:
> A slow, thick consciousness leaked in as the Super Wizard From Space
> opened his eyes. His thoughts were dulled, like he'd slept for far too
> long. The ground he was lying on was rough and cold. The air was full of
> gritty soot, making for hard, scratching breaths. There was a hanging
> darkness that he could only dispel by allowing some of his captured
> starlight to leak from his skin.

That's a nice ambiance for any sort of Hell.


> There must be someone. A fortress like this doesn't just appear, a road
> doesn't lay itself. Hand sliding against the wall, he moved toward the
> gate, intent on finding an entrance. Anything. His bubble of light eked
> along with him, showing only more and more stone.

I think he knows the way to the entrance already, he just has to find 
something else that makes sense.


> As he reached the gate, he saw an oddly shaped outcropping of rock in
> the middle of the cobblestone road. It looked worn, eroded by wind and
> time, but had a black charred patch at the top of it, like someone had
> once built a campfire. And just beyond it, further down the road, a
> large boulder with a fat hump on the top.
>
> A flash of remembrance came to him. Then a sense of dread. A deep
> breathe, then he released out a short wash of starlight, a wave of
> brightness that swept over his surroundings.
>
> He was in Double-Hell. The fortress wall and the massive gates and the
> cobblestone road, this was the entrance to Double-Dis. The charred rock
> was the Devil. The boulder was the car that had brought them here.
>
> It had all become stone. And by their grounded, worn shapes, it has been
> that way for a very long time.
>
> The splash of light faded into the distance and the darkness swallowed
> up the granite landscape, a thought struck him. Sharply. A sudden,
> dirty, outside thought.
>
> "Latterly, you vivify."
>
> The Secret Living Language, nowhere and everywhere,
>
> "Ingenuously."
>
> "I doubt that," the wizard muttered. He had only his small bubble of
> light again, and the blackness beyond seemed almost liquid now, an oily
> slippery notion hiding in the dark. Everything else, everyone else, now
> stone. As far as he could go, anything he could find, would be lifeless
> motionless stone. All of Double-Hell and its twice damned citizens,
> victims of
>
> "Megadusa."
>
> The wizard ground his teeth and waved a hand futilely at the darkness.
> "Stay out of my head." He spat out. An entire universe transformed to
> rock, and the only survivor was
>
> "An idea. A concept. Bio-philosophy."
>
> with had no form, no substance. Nothing material that could be
> transformed. Not like the cab driver, Ron, who was
>
> "Stone."
>
> and the howling screeching creatures on the wall
>
> "Stone."
>
> "But not me," the wizard mumbled, trying to control his stream of
> thought. "She left me be because"
>
> "The significance apparently eluded her... or was *extruded* from her,"
> was the answer, dosed heavily in satisfaction. "These exponentially
> infernal universes are not fabricated of matter and energy, incongruous
> to our own. The deeper our peregrination, the more transcendental they
> become. The less material their existences are composed of. Abstruse
> realities fashioned of philosophies and the hypothetical, where
> objective things like you became recondite and undefinable. And where
> ontology like myself are concrete, abundant, and plentiful."
>
> "You did this," the wizard said, already knowing the answer.
>
> "I could not countervail... an entire conceptual universe and I was so
> famished," it replied unapologetically. It swelled with pride, so much
> so that the wizard felt bombarded by the sensation. It was such a larger
> idea now. It was so much stronger. "I *feasted*! I *gorged*! On the
> unsubstance of this macrocosm, and let Megadusa petrify the corpus
> delicti.
>
> "But now we are obligated to perdure. Our companions and our conveyance
> were mineralized before I commoved Megadusa's ratiocinations. Her
> eradication will liberate them from their fictile restraints and evince
> the consuetude into Triple-Hell."

(Let's see if I understand this...)

"So you and she drove each other crazy," the Super Wizard growled.

"Indeed you rationalize correctness.  My noninfernal composure and her 
mythological nature were mutually interfering until such time as we had 
both sated our considerable hunger.  Now that higher intellectual 
functions are restored, it is now the occasion to proceed."

> It was right. Of course it was. Naturally, it made sense. Without the
> others, they could not move on.


> Down one twisted alley he saw a lone figure, facing a wall. The wizard
> immediately recognized the tall thin form, the dirty toga-like dress
> hanging off slumped shoulders, the writhing, lazy mass where flowing
> locks of hair should be.
>
> She was beating her head against the wall rhythmically. A shiny
> stickiness was almost visible where her forehead and the granite met,
> making a wet *thud* when she connected.
>
> He approached slowly, trying not to make a sound. Ready to look away
> should she turn to face him. But every time she seemed to consider it, a
> glazed, depressed expression seemed to crossed her face as a glazed,
> depressed thought crossed her mind, and she beat her head against the
> wall again.
>
> "I know what's happened. I know this..." the fury in the wizard's voice
> wavered a bit, "...this all wasn't your doing. Not entirely. But you
> *did* do it."
>
> "Tell me, if you can, where your freedom lies?" she said in an
> frustrated hiss. She caressed the stone wall, a gentle loving motion a
> mother would use upon the cheek of her child. "These streets are now
> fields that will never die."
>
> "You were part of this. You are complicit. There must be justice.
> Especially here." Orange fire sparked from his knuckles as he curled his
> hand. The flickers curved around and back on themselves, a loop of
> atomic flame that he rolled in his loosening grasp.
>
> She gave a slow nod that rested her head against the wall. "Deliver me
> from the reasons why," she said with a desperate whisper. "I'll never
> cry. I'd rather fly."

Why, under the influence of that alien consciousness she sounds rather 
like Jim Morrison!  8{D>


> The Super Wizard From Space snapped out his arm at her and the sparks
> exploded into a solar flare, whipping out in a curving fusion burst that
> vaporized everything in its path. The walls of the building burned like
> paper, the cobblestones melted into red liquid rock, the atmosphere
> caught fire. A thunderous noise blasted throughout the remains of the
> city a second later as the air collapsed in the vacuum, the noise alone
> cracking granite for miles.
>
> Megadusa's shape turned to ash instantly. Where she stood, the fiery
> magma of the road fell upon itself, burning through the bedrock of
> reality itself. A hole opened, a falling stream of red hot remains,
> pouring down into a lower universe. The ashes fell under their own
> weight and floated down the lava stream into the pit.

Oooh, now *there's* our Super Wizard finding the way.  More fun than a 
Perseus-style battle any day.  8{D>


> "It shouldn't been this way," the Devil said. "It was scripted a
> different way, but when the time came, we didn't act." The wizard turned
> his head to look at the Devil and saw an expression of angry
> understanding on the thin face. Behind him the cab was waiting, the
> engine rumbling deeply.
>
> "We can make this right. We have to keep moving forward. We have to see
> this through."

Nice ending.  I'm glad to see more Super Wizard stuff.


-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

Let's take a look, if you will, at the Second Amendment of the
Constitution, which protects every American's right to shoot another
American.  This cherished constitutional right to shoot people and make
them dead is currently recognized in all fifty states, most recently
Florida.

- The Borowitz Report
(http://www.borowitzreport.com/2012/03/29/an-argument-against-healthcare/),
March 2012.