[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #65: Demolio, part 5

wilalambre at gmail.com wilalambre at gmail.com
Wed Jul 26 16:05:13 PDT 2017


# THE SUPER WIZARD FROM SPACE, #65

## DEMOLIO, part 5

Genovefa eclipses the entire sky, her planetary shadow stretching from
alien horizon to alien horizon. And as the shadow expands, as she draws
closer, the more astronomic damage her presence inflicts: the world under
his feet, tumbling out of its orbit; its liquid core, kicked off rotational
balance; its magnetic field, popping like a soap bubble. What little
atmosphere it had sloughs off into black space.

Genovefa pushes tidal forces along the world's surface, sliding miles of
ancient ice toward him. Glaciers older than stars move for the first time
in unknown millennia, a continent sized avalanche aimed right at him.

The wizard cups his hands to his mouth and breathes into them. He converts
precious energy into base heat, compressing and squeezing it all in his
grasp, thousands of degrees into a single tight ball. And just before the
racing ice crashes onto him, he opens his hands and releases the heat out
at it.

The burst of temperature burrows between frozen molecules. The rushing wave
of ice shatters in a crushing concussion of steam and gas. Crashing
pressures explodes outward, sending opaque vapours into space faster than
the speed of sound.

"Szlippery, szlippery," curved radio waves carry Genovefa's voice,
determined and a little desperate. "Iz _thiZs_ what you're reduced to? A
cockroach, sZcurrying and hiding underneath the firmament? If make Uz
chasZze after you, We will bring _the heavenZz_ down upon you."

The wizard uses the cover of the steam cloud to rocket up into space,
arcing low and wide and up between both planets' horizons... and burning
light bombards him as soon as he's clear of their silhouettes. Poison
sunlight lances through unprotected skin, hot and sharp and ragged, like
shifting splinters. He _needs_ to get clear of the system's sabotaged star!

He doesn't get far before he feels a wave of distortion nips at his heels.
Genovefa moves away from the drifting ice planet and starts after him. Her
immense mass lets her twist spacetime, distorting electromagnetics and
bending spectrums throughout the star system. Physical distances stretch
away from him and contract around her as she kneads relativity to her
advantage. He can't tell how fast either of them are moving, if they're
moving at all, how close she's getting... he can't even tell where she _is_
half the time.

He's forced to keep near other celestial bodies in the system; anything
enough mass to counteract the effect, to stabilize his perspective. He lets
the next gravity well pull him in. A gargantuan gas giant, with reds and
oranges and browns spinning around it in fat murky bands. A dozen or more
small moons in tight familiar orbits; perhaps enough to cause his pursuer
trouble, to get in her way. He approaches from the dark side of the giant
and plunges in.

The cloudy atmosphere acts as a salve against his skin, immediately
blunting the slashing edges of the sunlight. No time to enjoy the relief,
though. Sinking deeper and downward, aimless, he turns his concentration
inward and begins expelling the toxic sunlight. As much as possible,
letting it bleed out as raw, violate energy. The hydrogen-rich atmosphere
opens up in a firestorm, miles of lightning and fulmination trailing in his
wake. Let it all burn; subtlety isn't the concern. He needs this poison
_out_.

He wishes for time for his wounds, but already, he senses Genovefa clawing
at the gas giant, her gravity shredding the bigger planet's skies out into
empty space. Pulling apart atmosphere like threads in a sweater. Only
moments before he loses any cover he still has.

He draws a breath and finds the Stringer's power, stored and saved within
him. There's a hesitation...  no matter the final circumstances, it remains
the last echo of ancient kin. It deserves more respect than this. But its
tightly-woven energy is the only untainted source he has available. He
whispers a repentant formula, and absorbs the power.

Genovefa flings lightning from her own atmosphere into the gas giant's rich
skies, fanning existing fires into a final apocalypse. Multiple
conflagrations scream around him. Red-orange flames turn blue-white,
following windswept currents, racing down toward the core. The heat
smothers the giant's magnetic field; its last gasp of gravity won't be long
after it.

Fire is simplistic and malleable. Its one of the first forms of energy the
Super Wizard race learns to manipulate. She _knows_ this can't hurt him, at
least not physically. This giant dies only as a _demonstration_.

And outside it's protection, Genovefa's distortion effect overwhelms him
again. Space-time dips as she weaponizes gravity, weaving new incongruous
_dimensions_ around both of them. "Are _you_ the death We feared, the
monsZzter that _sZzplit a planet in two_? Haz your bravery left you, now
that you face a world that _fightz back_?" He struggles against the sudden
fleeting definition of _direction_. He feels nauseous. He feels _repulsed_.

She's doing this on purpose, forcing him back against the sword-point.
Reluctantly, he orients himself with the only gravity well stronger than
Genovefa's: the system's sun. He heads further in system, trying to keep to
the shadows of inner-system worlds and their satellites.

He feels the fluctuation long before seeing it. One of the gas giant's
moons, tumbling right at him! And as he turns, he spots a second! Rolling
through empty space, two massive fists on a collision course, with him
_between_ them!

He rockets directly at the closest of the two spheres, skimming alongs its
lifeless surface, and uses its weak gravity to fling him around the other
side. Just as he clears it, the two moons _smash_ into each other! A flash
of fury between them, a soundless shockwave of asteroid shrapnel, the two
spheres _obliterate_ each other.

Genovefa looms over him, dragging more of the giant's stray moons in her
orbit. With a small change of her orientation, she flings _three more_ in
at him.

He pushes out his limited energy reserves, covering as much distance as
possible. He races toward the next closet planet, a solid rock covered in
swathes of green and wispy silver clouds. The three projectiles speed
toward him, their surfaces breaking away against the unnatural velocities.
He waits until the last possible moment, then _dives_ down into the new
planet's orbit. The moons' have too much momentum for Genovefa to change
their course. All three arc off the planet's gravity well, and are flung
past the planet, out into the endless void.

Down within the night-time side of the planet's atmosphere, the wizard uses
his energy to mask himself: bending light around his body, bursts of
radiation as chaff, wide frequency wavelengths muddying his trail. He can
guess what happens next, and he needs to _obscure_ himself amongst the
planet's expansive face.

Genovefa brings another of her stolen moons to bear, _slamming_ it down
like a club! The world careens out of orbit. Its crust _bursts_, its mantle
_erupts_, one of its continents instantly _vaporizes_. The moon splits with
a single stunted _shriek_ of chaotic fission.

...but the smaller debris bounces off, and floats back out into space.
Though wounded, though crippled, the world's substantially denser mass
shakes off the cosmic impact.

The wizard lands as far from the devastation as he can get without crossing
into the world's twilight. From the ground, he can conserve his limited
energy, letting the collision's debris and fiery radiation mask him. The
sky fills with dust and rock and magma and a mushroom cloud a _million
miles high_.

And just on the other side, he can make out Genovefa's immensity, her
surface alight with anxiety. "How long will you _prolong_ thiz? The cosmic
tournament iz _over_, all pretenZsez have been disZcarded. You have
outlived any usZefulnesZzz you might have ever wielded. You'll szoon find
you have few choicesZzs."

The ground under the wizard's feet shudders, the air thins and flattens.
The titanic mushroom cloud roars with thunder and breaks apart.

In the dark sky behind it, Genovefa's spherical shape expands... _and
unfolds_.

Half her mass rolls away, tectonic plates rolling around the fat oblong
shape in striped plates. The other, smaller half balloons out as rigid
mantle bristles and spikes with molten force. Hexagonal continents roll out
as segmented legs, reaching and grasping outward. Liquid oceans unfurl into
cold space, freezing out as immense wings. Streams of honey-way roads and
cables tattooed down her neck and along her colossal thorax, like
architectural nerves the size of highways, leading to the golden cities
bunched atop her head, forming a metropolitan crown.

"You need not zsee the dark dayz ahead. You need not sZzuffer to The End,"
the empyrean beast buzzes. "_Allow yoursZzelf_ thiz _final mercy_."

## NEXT ISSUE

Kaboom!
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