Cocytus the demon-glacier had the Super Wizard From Space engulfed
in its icy grasp, forever to be a frozen prisoner of the ninth
circle of Hell. Meanwhile the victorious Devil stood atop the
massive field of ice, grateful to be back home.
The Devil tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and just basked
in the warmth of the burning red hell-skies. It had been so long
since he had stood and just appreciated his realm, let the
hell-sun's light fall on him and let the hell-breeze flow over
him. The last time he had stood on hell-ground, he had been
unappreciative and spiteful, running away from his
hell-responsibilities to experience the thrills of crime-fighting
in the mortal world. { Diabolical Devilman #1 }
Now he would fight tooth and claw before anyone forced him out.
His peaceful moment was interrupted by a sense of discomfort from
the frozen mass beneath his feet. The demon-glacier was shifting
slightly. It was in pain. Deep in the dirty, opaque ice, the Devil
could see a pinprick of light, a faint glow within the frozen
darkness.
Then the pinprick grew. And grew. And became a ball of starlight,
beams of yellow heat refracting and radiating through the ice
floe's structure. Cracks appeared across the surface.
With an eruption of solar power, the glacier burst, building-sized
chunks of ice and stone hurtled across the plain. The
demon-glacier's cry was drowned out by the ferocious booms and
smashes of landscape crashing down on landscape.
Climbing out of the newly formed ice-canyon, the Super Wizard From
Space still glowed with the burning star-power within him.
"You've killed Cocytus!" cried the Devil.
"Dropping us both into Hell may have restored your full power, but
it has not reduced mine in the slightest." The Super Wizard From
Space wiped mud and gravel from his sight, his eyes meeting the
Devil's straight on. "Your frozen lake could not hold me."
"Perhaps not, but there are others who are willing to try."
Pointing his pitchfork upwards, the hell-sky darkened, red
lightning crackling across the new blackness. The Devil shouted
against the roar, "from it's perch on the violence-cliffs
overlooking the hell-ditches of the malebolge, I call upon the
giant-beast... Geryon!"
The black hell-clouds parted and crawling down from the vast pit
above them came a monstrous dragon-shaped creature. It clung to
the sky with it's lion paws, it's talons dug into the top of the
world. With a twisted, hate filled face of a bearded man, it
hissed, poisonous spittle raining down on the broken field.
"Get him!" commanded the Devil, pointing his pitchfork at the
Super Wizard From Space.
Geryon bellowed out a terrible growl and pounced from the sky
down, great leathery wings beating the air with deafening
drumfire. The Super Wizard From Space bent his knees a moment,
clenched his fists, and then leap into the air, flying at the
dragon-beast in a streak of pale light.
The bearded face of the monster took in a great breath and then
expelled a torrent of vile green poison at the figure racing at
it. Bringing both hands up in front of him, palms upwards, the
Super Wizard From Space pushed up hard and faster, the pale light
spiralling up in front of him like the tip of a rifle bullet. The
green liquid poison split on the point, the lit wizard cutting
through the substance like an arrow through a sheet of paper.
As the wizard cleared the poisonous assault, the huge wings pumped
stopping the giant-beast in mid plunge and it swatted the blue
insect with one of it's massive paws. The pale light cocoon
shattered like glass but the wizard grasped the taloned paw. The
monster howled, shaking it's leg trying to dislodge him, but the
wizard held his grip, crawling up the appendage using the lion fur
as his handholds.
When he reached the joint where the scales started, he hugged the
leg as much as he could, bracing his feet on the shin, and with a
heave of his star-powered strength, twisted until he heard a
crunch of broken hell-bone.
The creature howled in pain, flailing chaotically. The Super
Wizard From Space glided away, above the giant dragon-body. He
pointed at it's wings, one straight index finger at each of them,
and a blue beam raced from the tips. The leathery appendages
suddenly shrunk in size. Half, then half again, and then half
again.
The anger-filled eyes of the bearded face widened in confusion as
it suddenly could not keep itself in the air. Slowly at first, but
then gaining speed, it's weight caused it to plummet out of the
hell-sky.
The Devil had to scamper out of the way as his giant-beast crashed
onto the ice plain with a shaking hell-quake. It kicked with it's
hind legs, turning onto it's remaining good paws and glared up at
the blue-clad speck, roaring out an animal hell-challenge.
The Super Wizard From Space dived straight down at the
giant-beast, arms outstretched in front of him, using his own
powered flight to increase his super-speed.
The giant-beast coiled it's dragon body, folded its small useless
wings against its back. The bearded face narrowed its eyes like a
cat; it whipped its tail a few times then, with a surprising burst
of agility, it leapt up at the dropping wizard. Fanged mouth open.
And salivating.
The wizard uncurled his fists and opened his palms downward flat.
The pale light coiled around him, reforming the pointed cone.
With a sharp blast, the light-projectile entered the mouth,
shredding the dragon-throat, bursting through the gigantic
dragon-heart, drilling a fiery hole through the dragon-stomach,
and exploding out the back end of the giant-beast. Geryon was dead
before it realized it's meal had killed it.
It tumbled back down to the hard surface of the glacier again,
it's weight causing the already weak ground to turn to a jagged
shaking mess. The Devil cried out, falling over, losing his grip
on his weapon, tossed about by hailing meat and bile and blood.
Two! Two hell-demons killed! He pushed a particularly large piece
of dead dragon off him just as a blue boot kicked him across the
jaw. The Devil went sprawling onto his back in a blast of pain.
When he opened his eyes, he only had a moment to recognize the
pale star-glow of the super-champion crown. The Super Wizard From
Space had the Devil's pitchfork, and he plunged it through the the
Devil's abdomen.
"ARGH!"
"You were foolish to waste your resurrection trying to trap me,"
the Super Wizard From Hell said, pushing the prongs of the weapon
through the Devil's hell-gut to the frozen ground under him.
Despite the hell-pain, the Devil lurched forward on the pitchfork,
grabbing at the wizard's arms with his own clawed hands. "Not a
trap," he spit out, "I was only the bait."
The prongs of the pitchfork flickered with hell-power and glacier
crumbled underneath them, both falling through a second red mist.
Caught off guard a second time, the Super Wizard From Space fell
through an infinity while also not falling at all, the fresh new
mist seeming to grab and yank at him, dragging him down past
fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen sphere-like dimensions at a faster
and faster speed. Sound was nonexistent, light was nonexistent,
but he could feel the corpse of the demon-glacier, the red clay
plains and black crags that trapped it in its pit, all of Hell
that contained it whisked up, out and, away from him.
This time, when the world around him solidified and the ground
came rushing up, the Super Wizard From Space was prepared. He
caught himself, landing roughly on the balls of his feet, one hand
flat in front of him for balance. The mist wavered away, revealing
a gritty cobblestone road that lead to a fantastically massive
fortress wall, infinite in length and height. Made of black iron
and reinforced with ugly scratchy stone, he could make out where
towers and ramparts jutted out illogically.
Directly in front of him, a huge wooden double-gate was creaking
open with the screeching wrenching sound of two hundred screaming
souls. It took long, drawn out moments for the impossibly heavy
doors to scrape open enough to allow a single massive figure to
march out.
The creature was monstrous in size, at least twice the wizard's
own height. It had leathery red skin, two massive curled goat
horns protruding from it's forehead, and burning yellow eyes that
seems to spit out hell-sparks wherever they gazed. A twisted black
circlet of thorns and razor wire hovered over it's cracked skull,
glowing with a hateful darkness. The massive grin dribbled thick
lava and the great cloven feet left smashed cracked magma as it
walked toward him. It dragged a giant three-pronged pitchfork of
gold, almost comically too large for even it's size though it
managed it easily with a single clawed hand.
The hell-fire filled yellow eyes stared down at the impaled Devil,
looking sickly and small on the ground, then at the crouched
wizard. It's malicious grin widened sickeningly, two rows of
yellowed fangs showing.
"Hey there, jerks! Welcome to Double-Hell! I'm the Super-Devil!"
he belched out a harrowing laugh.
.........................................
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Originally when I wrote this Wizard-vs-Devil arc, it was only
going to be two issues. When I was finishing up writing the second
part, however, I realized it was twice as long as any of the
previous issues. I was really enjoying the 1000-1500 word length
and preferred to keep at that. So I split the issue, the
two-parter now becoming a three-parter. I'm not certain that was
the best decision. I'm afraid this middle part of the story now
comes across as a bit repetitive without the pay-off of the last
part. In retrospect, I could have cut out the entire fight with
Geryon and been okay with an issue at around 2000 words, but I'm
trying to get these out weekly on Tuesdays and didn't think of it
in time. Oh well, hope you still find fun in them. :)
NEXT ISSUE: REVENGE OF THE DIABOLICAL DEVILMAN
.........................................
Wil Alambre, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wilalambre
"Hurry, uni-scribe! We have less than one space-hour to get to the
negotiating table before the Great Disaster arrives!" The desperate uni-diplomat paced back and forth in the room. He kept
looking at the space-clock, watching the moments tick away and
whinnying quietly under his breath. The light in the room was starting
to fade away as ominous clouds rolled in, covered up the twin suns. It
was as if the very planet understood the impending doom and was losing
hope.
"Very well, we agree. A tournament, then, to end this rampage. But you have witnessed the power at his disposal. He has a billion billion years of our science-sorcery at his command. Will all you great super-civilizations commit your super-champions to this?"
On a distant world, a mummy-robot and a brown-robed monk silently made their way to the center of a blasphemous cathedral. Though the robot lurched ungainly, it's servos making an uneven whirring sound as they moved the broken machine through black-stone hallways, it held it's bandaged head high, the ghostly
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!"
In the ruins of an ancient city of pillars, an alien octopus pointed eight dangerous looking ray-guns at a white-bearded hermit. "You best be giving me that there data-cylinder, Gavrilo, or I'll vaporize you right where you stand, I done swear it!"
Two figures hurtled through a scarred green warp tunnel underneath the skin of the universe toward the lost planet of the silver skull machine. The Super Wizard From Space was leading the way, encased in a cocoon of hard light that protected him from the rigors of space travel. His companion, a filthy bearded hermit,
The Super Wizard From Space and the Hermit Wizard From Space were trapped in an asteroid belt by a swarm of gigantic space-bees! As it's fellow drones circled uniformly, one particularly grusome space-bee broken from the formation. It was as massive as any of the drifting asteroids, it's gigantic yellow black body big enough to drag smaller free-floating
A monstrously giant bee made of hollow electricity used its clawed legs to peel open the hull of the crashed rocket-ship. It glowed brightly with a pale light, partially transparent and seemingly fragile as it opened up the armored cockpit as if it was made of tinfoil. The ship's two occupants didn't even have a moment to shake off the shock before
The two super wizards stood stock still as the two floors of the building above them were eaten by the ghost of a cosmic megalodon. Bigger than a rocket-ship, it nonetheless hung effortlessly in the air, it's fifty-five rows of cleaver-like teeth surrounding their room as it floated vertically above them. The daylight of the alien sky shone
I am Theodor. I am a rainbow blue fish. I lived on a planet far away. Then I died. But that is was not the end. That was the beginning. I became a ghost. I became part of the infinite school. Thanks to wise Rex. This is the story of Rex. He is big fish. A big shark. Many sizes big. From a far away blue
It took nearly every ghost fish of the infinite school to confidently herd Sharkasaurus Rex into the depths of the invisible galaxy. The megalodon's monstrous instincts were near impossible to fully understand, a hundred million space-years of predatory instinct and insatiable hunger. The spectral school's entire telepathic concentration
"Oh dear me!" shouted Brody Dharma to the marble diamond hall, his gecko eyes spinning in shock as the ghostly forms of Geisel and Theodor circled over the sticky yellow remains of Queen Buzz. "Fish! Please! Contain yourselves!" "Tyrant!" flared out Geisel angrily, telepathically sharing horrific
"Master hero! Master hero!" cried out the young boy, frantic enough to ignore his disciplined training. "A terrible occurrence! The infinite school have lost their hold on their grisly teacher! The cosmic crown reacted suddenly and cut off their psychic leashes! Sharkasaurus Rex is loose!". The young boy wildly rang the same small gong all the monks in this
Geisel was gone, his phantasmal form torn apart in savage fury by the recently de-crowned Sharkasaurus Rex. The equally ethereal Theodor watched the entire sudden rending in still shock. As did the rest of the infinite school, millions of fellow ghost fish that had all gathered to psychically leash the mighty megalodon.
"Sharkasaurus Rex is feeding on the simple people of this planet," said the
Super Wizard From Space, pointing to where a sticky-looking red hue spread in
the red mist for a space-minute before the fin moved on. "He's converting their
psyches into spiritual mass, growing exponentially. This incredible instrument
is our only hope."
He was lying on the ground. Still at the top of the mountain
monastery. Yes, he was certain of it. There was no mistaking. He
remembered the feel of these particular stones. And the scent of that
particular moss. But he could not remember how he had came here. It
was like his mind was rattling around in his head while at the same
time trying to swell larger than his skull could contain.
I warned him not to use the Gong Ago, as the volume required from that sacred instrument would have unintended side effects. But like an old mule wearing ragged blinders, he rung it out anyway. And that powerful pitch has freed me and my like-minded brethren. My name is Andy Dharma. I am the master villain of the Invisible Monks.
In a clearing at the center, a nine-foot lizards bowed respectfully to his duplicate. He dressed the same way. He moved with the same simple grace. He stood with the same relaxed posture. And he looked back at him with the same calculating eyes, measuring the short distance between them, judging the smallest of movements.
"You are unbalanczed. You cannot be truszted with coszmic power." Her hand closed into a fist and squeezed. From every direction, the spectral fish tossed out their determination in crisscrossing grey lines, trying to ensnare his mind.
"Andy, don't do this," whispered Brody, "You can't." "Yes I can! Yes I will!" he shouted back at him. "No more bad habits disguised as tradition! No more of yesterday's rules deciding today's fate! I will show you what change can accomplish!" He spat on the floor in disgust, and backflipped off the balcony.
On the side of a small lake, a simple man was fishing off the end of a rickety dock. The lake was usually a clear blue, filled with many delicious fish. It was not so now. It was murky, tinted pink and red, the fish preferring to stay closer to the bottom, where the water was cleaner and lines could rarely reach. It meant the man would be lucky for even a small catch, but that would be enough. He lived alone on this shore, in his cabin up the hill, and had only himself to feed.
He wiped his hands on his bloody apron, then stroked his long grey beard with a smile. It was with great experience that he could judge the quality and balance of a blade and in all the experience, he had never worked with such magnificent instruments.
A portion of empty space bubbled and bulged, like plastic melting in a fire, then peeled away to reveal the spitting green end of a warp tunnel. Wrapped and protected in a cocoon of pale starlight, the Super Wizard From Space blasted out of the tunnel opening at incredible speed. The wound in black reality mended behind him with a practiced flick of
Sharp super-lightening split across a sick dry sky as a lone yellow cab pulled up in front of a long abandoned university. The pale driver scratched at his unkept beard. Hunched over the steering wheel, he got a better look through the windshield at the derelict campus. "You sure this is where you wanna to be?" he gruffly asked the passenger in the back seat.
"I will not tolerate your
presence here. Nor your trickery. I will burn away every molecule. I
will crack every atom. I will unravel your infernal form down to the
minimalist components and grind the remains under my boot."
"Once upon a time, five dark lords of multiple underverses made the mistake of signing a series of magical contracts in an attempt to insure some level of trust between them. Inevitably, all five of them went back on their words and now the tangled wording of those contracts have trapped them in the stone sepulchres of Quinto-Hell."
The ashen remains of the gorgon sunk into the circling river of molten rock and disappeared down the sinkhole in reality, pulled toward the punishments of Triple-Hell. A bleating car horn sounded. The Devil tugged at the wizard's shoulder. "Come along, guv. Our ride awaits."
Somewhere in the dank musky darkness swamp, a single snapping growl was followed up by a chorus of hungry grumbles and hollers and howls. Jagged trunks of twisted trees creaked and cracked as something massive pushed through. Huge lungs filled up and expelled, making for a thunderous breathy bass echo.
Black glass and brittle shale and oddly shaped boulders all bashed against each other in the tornado ferocity of the space between conceptual realities. Every small piece was both nonexistant and an immense solidity to itself, dragging and throwing and colliding with its surroundings as the entire mess fell through infinite layers of fractal
Looking about, he could see endless desert interrupted by black stone squares, similar to the one they were taking refuge on. A long wind was blowing, picking up loose dunes, shifting them up and over and around in an ever-moving landscape. It gave everything a burnt look, a rising sea of sand that just faded without an horizon. The only thing cutting through the leather-colored sky was the sun, massive and oversized, ten times larger than it should be.
The Devil, The Secret Living Language, and the Super Wizard From Space stood upon a massive square of black stone half buried in blistering desert sands. "This is it, end of the line," the Devil announced.
In the seedy bowels of a seedy mining camp, Cephalo Paul roused from blurriness to found himself at the mercy of an unkindness of anthropomorphic ravens. The lot of them stood on four clawed talons, spoke through horrifying beaks lined with serrated edges, and had too many ruby-coloured eyes.
"My name is senior lieutenant Yuri Gigan Topithecus, last survivor of the once-mighty space-sasquatch race. I was a hero of my people and a triumph of my government, becoming the first of my planet to journey into outer space... and as I completed my first orbit in my prototype capsule, I helplessly watched the Super Wizard From Space destroy my world."
The Super Wizard From Space towed his wounded prisoner to a dying system in a lonely constellation. It was a place that had been full and vibrant when the universe was young, a very long time ago. Now, it's small, dense white star bled away its diminishing heat and weak light into empty space.
Across the vastness of galaxies, a nameless forager bee achieves a stable geosynchronous orbit with distant Planet M. The ladened insect has been in contact with appropriate representatives, has deposited it cargo. It now maintains a microwave relay with the surface, and only awaits permission from the Hive to open communications.
"I-hereby-challenge-the-Super- Wizard-From-Space-to-combat," spits out Emperor M, the bile broadcasted from his loudspeaker face, "and-you'll-bear-witness-to-it , you- insufferable-bitch."
In the clarity of the desert night, a single point of light smolders against the blue-black curtain. And it slowly grows the closer it gets, falling toward Us through immense distances. The Super Wizard From Space is coming to Planet M.
Emperor gestures back to the great monolith and declares, "At-the-behest-of-our-electronic-ennead, I've-entombed-the-Super-Wizard-From-Space-within-the-Pyramids-Of-Ka! His-power-will-feed-our-preservation-batteries-for-countless-cycles."
"The Szuper Wizard From Szpace is sztill alive. And He sztill has Hisz coszmic crown." We say it aloud. Not to anyone. To ourselves, as swirling shaking thoughts become cold and real. This is real. This is happening. "Why? Why have you done thisz?"
If you'll indulge me, I'll tell you a story about how some people ( who were much too smart for their own good, I'm afraid ) tried to find an easy, quick solution; by doing so, they doomed countless lives to AGES of suffering.
Now, I was halfway through a tale about countless doomed lives... and yes, my friend, I do know the difference between 'countless' and 'seven'. Those tragic academics were only the first direct victims of these newly formed cosmic crowns. What happened next was intended to prevent more loss of life, but it actually placed the entire universe in peril.
"Hello Dragutin. I wouldn't be here if things weren't desperate. But things are desperate, and seeing as you're partially to blame, I think it appropriate to give you the chance to resolve it."
Vaso sneers at the world below. "I don't trust Sixth Columnists, General. They're an unstable bunch, every lot of them. And they splintering apart. Hard to be sure what bent their worship takes."
"A swarm! A monster swarm! Oh! Oh gods, they were everywhere. They killed everyone. They stabbed them and killed them. And the dead changed into more and went to do the same. Stabbing and changing and stabbing. Everyone's gone!"
Long spear-length stingers, glints of wet toxin at the tips. Wide crystal wings banging against torsos, making thrumming thunder. It's a *blanket* of angry buzzing. Getting thicker as they crawl over each other. At me. Looking to smother me. Kill me. If I'm lucky.
"What I'm doing, it has to be done. Because someone has to do it. Because no one else is doing it. They're scared of what might happen. Scared of what they could lose. Scared of things they can't change. We can't live like that."
Do you have any idea how this looks? We aren't at war anymore. The tournament is supposed to *prevent* this exact sort of conflict from flaring up again. You can't just go around dropping armies on the *home planets* of the universe's seven super-races."
His ancient race long ago unravelled the laws of physics, and they then learned how to redefine them. They harvest fusion fire to sustain themselves, and they hollow out suns to build their private strongholds. They are guardians of the spaces they know and explorers of the spaces they don't.
Somewhere on Planet M, a forlorn survivor is losing her grip on her unusual authority. "I'm... what? A surrogate? A stopgate? Why keep me and then lie to me? Why save me and then despise me so much?"
"The philosophies of your unconventional brother go against your own... he would do _anything_ to ensure your safety. With his assistance, we will prevail."
Andy Dharma bent over the Stringer's prone body, wrapped both arms around his head, and with a single fast wrench, broke the super-wizard's neck. KRACK!
He'll head toward Genovefa. Maybe not immediately, but inevitably. She can't hide from him any more than he can avoid her. The Cosmic Crowns draw them together. Its a drive. Its a feverish heat.
"The Schrivener has the Crown. The cosmic tournament is between him and Queen Buzz. Walk away from all this devestation. Put an _end_ to this madness."
"That's exactly what I intend to do."
"We've _sztudied_ you for thiz entire Tournament! Without your cosZzmic weapon, you're no threat! You're little more than a ztubborn _nail_ for me to hammer down."
“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.”
Reality stretches like canvas pulled taut. Time stutters and scratches and skips, between moments and months. The Wizard takes refuge within the umbra of the system's innermost planet, little more than a corner to be backed into.
"Born of cozmic power, with a mind the sZzize of the universZze... and you thought death would stop her? What szort of sZzimple idea did you take her for, that she'd die szo quietly?"
In the calm eye of it, I can just make out Melisende's massive shape, pacing and stomping and _screaming_ at them, her voice amplified overtop the cacophony. "Are you happy now? That'z it! It'z over!"
Playing tour guide's certainly been more agreeable than playing babysitter. As far as pointless distractions go. If nothing else, its been interesting visiting old haunts, if only to see what's left of them.
