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 bright buzzing shape changed position and jammed down into the breach with its spear-like stinger.
Cephalo Pete was already badly wounded, thick ink and sticky blood seeping out of wounds sustained in the crash landing. The stinger came down and skewered him in a single vicious stroke. He made loud gacking sounds and clutched futilely at it with his tentacles. The electrical space-bee ignored the flailing and let the venom of the stinger soak into the alien octopus's body. The octopus's gaze was filled with helpless fear. "Gavrilo," Cephalo Pete choked out, trying to reach out with a broken limb, "Help me. Pleeaass... sss...
"...zzz..."
Gavrilo retreated into the rocket-ship, unable to do anything but watch the toxins transform his former partner. The mass grew exponentially, becoming fat and round. A pair of clear wings ripped out from the back. Two long powerful legs came from the front. And the tentacles elongated, hardening with grey brown carapace into eight deadly stingers.
"Oh Pete. I'm so sorry," whispered the hermit wizard as Cephalo Pete's form was twisted into another monstrous drone of the lycanthro-bee swarm.
"Don't be szzorry," came the low rumbling reply from the new terrible shape. Its striped body expanded and contracted slowly like it was still getting used to it's new shape. Eight antennae stretched into the air, catching signal scents being broadcast from it's electrical brethren. "There'szz a szzting of pain... but alszzo a szzting of... of fresh realizzzation. Before I waszz aimlesszz. Now I got me sharp purposzze. To my hive! To my queen!"
Gavrilo raised his hands and let science sorcerous powers well up in him. His fingertips glowed with blue white sparks. "Don't make me kill you," he said, taking a step back.
"You cain't hurt me. I szztill got your name, wizzzard!" Wings became a blur and the Pete-bee jumped in the air. It zigged and zagged in a complex communicative dance before joining up with the electrical drone. Both then looked down on the Hermit Wizard From Space menacingly, stingers almost shaking with anticipation.
Gavrilo gave up the bluff and ran into the depths of the ship. Whatever that new horror was, it had all of Pete's memories on top of any instincts the change granted it. It knew Gavrilo's name, and was immune to his power.
The hull rang out from numerous thuds as the pair of space bees banged against the outside. As Gavrilo made his way toward the rear airlock, eight pointed stingers cracked through the shell of the ship in unison. However the Pete-bee was stabbing blindly, the stingers were spread wide rather than bunched together, and Gavrilo was able to squeeze between the deadly barbs.
But as the stringers were drawn out, Gavrilo saw the purple venom left behind in the puncture holes already soaking into the walls and the floor. The metal skin of the rocket-ship screeched as the shape started to change. Using the warping walls as footing, Gavrilo crawled out of the airlock just before the hatch closed behind him the rocket-ship turned into a metal reflection of the other space-bees.
The rocket-bee fluttered up heavily, fat thrusters on it's back instead of wings, eyes of portal glass, transmitter dishes drinking in the overwhelming attack pheromones in the air. The mechanically jointed legs bent with a creaking sound, the laser turrets at the ends warming up.
A sonic boom blasted from the sky above them. The Super Wizard From Space accelerated straight downward, the energy cocoon around him flaring with bright power. He pushed his hands straight in front of him, and the energy formed a pointed cone, tearing straight through the transformed hull like a bullet. Inside, he spread out his arms, expanding the bubble around him. The solar-powered bubble flattened the rocket-bee's mechanical interior against the armored skin. Gavrilo watched the rocket-bee suddenly bulge into a sphere, computer panels and piping and wiring oozing out between the hull's seams before it crashed to the ground, dead.
With a hard kick, the deformed hull split in half and the Super Wizard From Space marched out of the rocket-bee's corpse. With a closed fist and a jabbing motion, a ball of force hit the wall beside Gavrilo, collapsing the aged concrete inwards. "Quickly inside," the super wizard said, motioning to the opening.
Both ran into the dark building, crossing a dusty room into a long-abandoned hallway just as angry buzzing and grasping legs jammed through the hole. Electricity from the shield-bee arced madly, lighting up the area in strobing bursts, but the opening was too small for either drone.
"You can't run, wizzzard! We have you trapped inszzide!" yelled the Pete-bee so loudly the vibrating sounds caused the structure to shake and bits of loose plaster to fall.
"It won't take them long to find another way in," the Super Wizard From Space said grimly.
"Doesn't matter." the hermit wizard said excitedly. He threw a beam of light up and down the hallway, overgrown with strange moss. "We're inside. The silver skull machine is here. I can still make this right!"
"No, you can't. Listen to me."
"The hallway is clear this way! Follow me!" Gavrilo said with a smile, running further into the ruined complex and leaving footprints in the thick dust. He didn't know where he was going, but he aimed for the centre of the building. He was so close, it was like his goal was tugging at him.
He eventually got to a large entranceway. The wooden doors were rotted away but above the frame in red paint, a collection of unknown words and a distinct skull-shaped symbol. This was it!
He flooded the cavernous chamber with blue white light. Banks of rusty machinery lined every wall. A green ivy-like vines had infested the entire ceiling, a few lines of leaves hanging at random intervals. In one corner, a handful of skeletons, tall with too many ribs and overly narrow shoulders. They looked huddled around broken burnt crates.
And in the centre, attached to shattered screens and piping and conduits, a gigantic silver skull, the hermit wizard's light gleaming off it's tarnished surface. It was hollow, it's massive empty cranium filled with a chair and controls and buttons and levers, enough room remaining only for a single occupant. The eye sockets had been filled with tinted glass, the jaw closed with a black metal grill, allowing fat wires to spill out. On the side, an airlock door had been crudely attached, invitingly open.
He leapt across the room and peered into the eye sockets, pressing his face against the dirty glass. His heart skipped a beat. The console was glowing. Lights were shining faintly. A hum resonated from inside.
"It still works," Gavrilo said.
"No, it doesn't," said the Super Wizard From Space. He crossed the large room, ignoring everything but his companion.
"They must have tapped directly into the skull itself! There's still power! Look! I'm certain I can..."
"No, Gavrilo, you can't!" said the super wizard loudly. Sharply. With no more patience. "The time machine doesn't work! It never did!"
The hermit wizard stopped. The words hung in the air.
"Look around you," the super wizard said, a hand sweeping across the room. "Does it look like this civilization was able to save itself?"
Gavrilo turned to look at the super wizard with unbelieving eyes.
The Super Wizard From Space frowned, like a parent breaking a child's heart. "Yes, the Argentonian scientists were able to tap into the god-giant's magic for their time machine, but the power could never be directed within. It's why King Argentum couldn't save himself.
"The technology works, but the silver skull radiates the effect outwards rather than into the machine. The entire universe that travels through time, with only the pilot chamber actually changing. The time machine works inside out."
Gavrilo was shell-shocked. "But... no, it... "
"Any pilot gets shunted away as the machine's limited interior realigns to a different time period. But since the controls are always here with us, they're trapped forever. The machine is useless. It always has been."
The Hermit Wizard From Space stared at the super wizard. Then at the silver skull machine. Then at the super wizard. He felt his entire long age upon him. All his mistakes suddenly hung heavily on his shoulders.
There was nothing he could say. There were no words.
A breaking snapping sound came from above them. Ivy vines snapped, girders and concrete crumbled. Long ruined supports and age weakened materials gave way. Rows of triangular teeth faded in from the corners and bit through the ceiling. Two or three entire floors above them were yanked up and into a wide gaping blackness. Sunlight suddenly burst in as the five layers of powerful hexagonal plates linked in from phantasmal nothingness to form a set of building-sized jaws.
The pair of super wizards stared up at huge ghostly shape, easily three or four times larger than Pete's rocketship. It's long sleek shape was transparent, the rubble of the research centre visible within as it was crushed by ectoplasmic forces. Though it hung in the air, the wind visibly rippled past its massive fins, the shimmer rolling along a gigantic blade-like tail that only occasionally existed.
And floating above it's forehead, set just behind it's golden eyes, a wreath of bay laurels made of interlocking branches and tangled leaves, radiating with a sickly green pallor.
"That's no monster bee," said the Super Wizard From Space, grimly, "It's the ghost of Sharkasaurus Rex. And he looks angry."