The Wonder Worlock: The Beginning of the Intz, Part 2

PART THE SECOND

The Wonder Worlock battles Alf of Everwhen, by Tony Savage and Sash Scott

The Old Elves have returned to the Shirewood (albeit on another planet) and there is something deep inside the new Intz that brings a comfort to them about the fact.

At the same time, their eyes are seeing combat for the first time as dozens of diminutive bodies pile on a startled Wonder Worlock and Plantagenous Rex, no warning whatsoever from the cosmic awareness both possess.

Determined that no harm come to geneticist Dr. Mayrah Rand or the Oceanus 6, Plantagenous reasserts his pocket universe, safely (he hopes) tucking the six young Intzlings and their “mother.”

Meanwhile, the dark mage instinctively begins weaving a web of null time around the elves, hoping to stop the madness long enough to ask why beings who should be friends to the Intz seem out to destroy them.

While the cosmic web halts a few elves, spewing mystic matter here and there, Alf, legendary leader of the time-traveling Elves of Everwhen, steps right through it!

“You cannot trap Alf, demon spawn!” the lanky old elf shouts, his pointy hat with glitters reflecting the coming sunrise shining brightly. His long but dirty wizard’s gown almost drags the soil of the Shinewood, and a little wooden twig springing from his hand – a wand? – focuses the great power of this strange being. For all intents and purposes, the Wonder Worlock thinks, this elf reminds him of a pint-sized version of the wizard Merlin of Arthurian (or perhaps Disney) legend. “You can try, but traps are not invented yet that are Alf-proof!”

Another fact is plain to the dark mage almost immediately: This Alf is a grand strategist and leader of men – or elves. While the celestial sorcerer and the Plantane were involved in emotion, Alf and his fellows used the circular aperture of Plantagenous’ pocket world against their cosmic senses, entering the time stream of this universe from another at incredible speed and then organizing the elves immediately into flanks of 20 each, two groups taking on the confused Intz uncles while a third fan out to seek Mayrah and the Oceanus 6. Brilliant!

This attack was planned, and not just today.

The end of Alf’s little stick glows white-hot, splitting the secondary shields of the Wonder Worlock down their centers while invading the primary physical and psionic shields with elfin magicks!

The dark mage finds himself becoming dizzy, but a vision in his mind of Vargas and Tokeen gives him the strength to strike back. Picking himself up off the rain forest-like floor of this tropical clime, the galactic guardian puts his space-bending power to the test, sending Alf flying head over heel while telepathically urging on Plantagenous, whose cosmic shields seem to be doing more good against the elves than did those of the Wonder Worlock.

You’ve got about 20 elves on the run, Plantagenous, the Wonder Worlock says psionically to the powerful alien. Try imprisoning them in a Dyson sphere in Null Space while I continue to keep Alf occupied!

I will attempt this as you ask, O mighty Worlock, but I fear my will in no way, shape or form equals your own, Plantagenous responds with the new telepathic potential opened in him by Zavar of Threlkel. Besides, O sir, this is insane! The elves have ever been friends to the Intz historically, whenever they would venture to the Shirewood. Is it possible these are doppelgangers or elves from a failed time system?

Plantagenous, the Dyson sphere --! the sorcerer urges. I feel Alf regaining his composure!

The cosmic entity known as Plantagenous Rex concentrates and tries to remember both his recent teachings and the being he once was – confident, unafraid. A crack in the air forms next to the space/time oval of the elves, a doorway into Null Space, as taught him by the Wonder Worlock.

Inside the dark hole can be seen several Dyson spheres, megastructures originally described to terrans by the human Freeman Dyson. Such “spheres” are systems of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star – in this case, a black star -- and capture most or all of its energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Dyson was correct. In this instance, the Dysons are in negative space and absorb negative energy from a dark star. Within several of the spheres are enviroments of differing kinds, and to one of those environments does Plantagenous suddenly send the 20 elves around him hurling.

And you cannot hear screams in space! An exhausted Plantagenous then falls onto the soil he loves so much.

The shock of the loss of his fellows again sends Alf to the ground, the elfin collective broken by dimensional chains. The Elves of Everwhen are not born, you see, but assimilated – beings and cultures intergrated into their collective. According to Tokeen the Old One, the elves have encountered and assimilated thousands of species and billions to trillions of individual life forms throughout the universe, and from differing time periods.

That chain has been broken, perhaps for the first time in the existence of the elves, and Alf is having a hard time with that fact.

“My brothers! My brothers! Where are you? Where in space or time are you?” says the dizzied elf commander, filling the body of the Wonder Worlock with elfin magicks! But the celestial sorcerer is prepared this time, and turns a simple conjurer’s cone on Alf, allowing it to swallow up the magicks and then unleash them back on the diminutive spellcaster.

“What trickery is this? You send my own magicks back at me? Blasphemous!” Alf scolds, as the mage fights the pricks and stabs of elfin weapons from the 20 or so elves attempting to bypass his domed shield.

A moment of silence almost in the garden that has now become a battlefield. (When will this stop happening? Plantagenous asks himself.) It is then that the mighty Vortex of Vapors wafts over the tropical space, once the scene of a great surprise party, filling the lungs of Alf and his 20 compatriots as it picks them up and sends them willy-nilly this way and that.

Alf then suddenly oozes into the ground, only to rise from the surface behind the dark mage like some small zombie, coming to life.

“Ahh, I see you too are acquainted with the Rock Trolls of Ymok,” the Wonder Worlock says, “for this attack, although it may have an elfin name, reeks of Ymok and his deadly armies.”

No response from Alf, save for energies most painful from his wand and outstretched hand.

“O Shield of Synester, protect my path,” he utters, and a protective tube oozing from the large glowing shield around the mage allows him protective passage right past the elves, still clearing their throats of mystic gasses, to his fallen friend, Plantagenous. All along the way, elves beat at the shield furiously, Alf’s wand blasting its great length.

“Are you all right?” the galactic guardian asks.

“Aye, mage, but this must cease!” the Plantane says. “When I fell on my soil, I can feel how upset this whole world, the Shirewood, is by this disturbance. I will not see another world fall to the likes of one like Vargas! So even though the Everwhen elves taught the Intz much, this must be set aright!”

One look is all it takes between these protective “uncles.” They mind-meld and slowly, like the elves themselves, form their own form of collective: a rare (for the Wonder Worlock, at least) and successful attempt at -- a Solo-Brain!

A Solo-Brain is a collective being which is created by a significant number of cosmic entities merging their physical and mental beings into one organism (in this case, Plantegenous and the Wonder Worlock), combining their collective psionic and cosmic energy which manifests itself as a gigantic brain-like organism. As such, it has an immeasurable intellect, and the composite knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience of all its constituent beings. A Solo-Brain possesses vast psionic abilities across a wide range of mental talents, including levitation, psychokinesis, telepathy, the ability to project mental bolts of force, the ability to travel through the vacuum of space unharmed, and intellectual powers of information processing and problem-solving far beyond human understanding.

Now the great Solo-Brain lashes out at all the time travelers on The Shirewood II, freezing them in their tracks. Connecting them across the vast distance of dimensions to those elves on the Dyson sphere, the Solo-Brain prods, probes and finds the answer in the mind of the linchpin about which the elfin collective revolves: Alf!

A blast of energy and it is over, the Wonder Worlock and Plantagenous standing over the limp but reviving Alf. Also present: Mayrah and the Oceanus 6.

“We must save the Intz -- must save --.” Alf whispers.

“Yes, yes, we now know your cause was good, your motives pure, my friend,” the cosmic conjurer says. “You might have just said something to me.”

“You are legend about the universes of all times, Wonder Worlock,” Alf says, rising to his full height of about four-and a-half-feet. “It is that one that is untrusted. He is the scourge of the universe, and he will one day kill this Shirewood as well. He is a virus!”

“He has been cured -- by me! He no longer requires cultures to devour, in the manner of the Plantanes,” the Wonder Worlock says. “His cosmic energy sustains him. Know this as truth!”

“But how --?” Alf says, then notices Tokeen. Young Tokeen, of the Oceanus 6. “Which Intz are you?” he asks him directly.

More than 10 minutes later (or is it 20?) comes the response: “Tokeen the Younger.” He then apologizes to his mother for such a hasty outburst.

“There should be no Tokeens, he is dead and so is his seed,” Alf said. “I do not know you.”

“His seed was rescused by Plantagenous and the result are these six young Intz,” the mage says.

“Then they are not of planetary material, but of Tokeen’s own self? That is it!” Alf shouts. “Tokeen is the thing that is different this time. He is the thing that is different from all other times. You! Tokeen!”

“I am sorry, I do not understand,” Mayrah says.

“As we learned from our joining into a Solo-Brain,” the Wonder Worlock says, “Alf and his Everwhen elves have been wandering the timestreams this way and that trying to save the Intz before our friend, Plantagenous, attacks the Shirewood. When that was not possible, they focused in on a time/world where Intz returned. But again, their lives were brought to a close by a marauding, hungry Plantagenous! They lacked the knowledge of the Before-Time and the real seed of the Intz.”

The conjurer stops in his explanation to put an arm around his friend, the gardener. He knows Plantagenous will always carry the guilt of destroying the Shirewood – and a billion other habitated worlds – with him.

“You see, most beings have been programmed to think of time as a linear structure,” the Wonder Worlock says. “It is probably not. There is more evidence to support the idea that time and space are actually organisms. They are physical things. That is probably why someone like the Everwhen elves – and aye, even I – can travel through them.

“This is an area we call the Bendisverse; in truth, it is all happening now. The past is happening now, the future is happening now. It’s all happening now! Alf knew Tokeen is the difference-maker in this world because he has the most of his elder’s seed. What Alf does not know is that the timestream is broken. And you, Alf, broke it!”

“What??!” the startled elf says.

“From traversing the timestream for ages, bringing individuals and even whole cultures into your collective, time has been broken,” the mage says. “This is something we must remedy now, or we may see a bending and merging of times, realities and even dimensions! The answer, as determined by our gestalt, is – the Dyson spheres!

“Alf, 20 of your fellows are already on one, and the Null Universe of the black stars does not touch the universe or the reality we call our own. You can not only wander their worlds but their time as well. And there will be Tri-Ice, a rainbow bridge I now create between the Null Universe and the unique world that is the Shirewood II.”

With a pass of his hand, a beautiful extradimensional span connecting the Shirewood II to the Null Space is in place.

“There is much left to teach these new Intz, and certainly the elves of Everwhen are among the most primary of teachers!” the mage says.

“We would be honored, as in days of yore, to help cure these Intz of their dumbness,” Alf said, waving his wand. With a brief flash, the 40 or so elves quickly depart the Shirewood over Tri-Ice, eager to explore their new home. Before closing his time-aperture, Alf telepathically promises the Wonder Worlock he and the Elves of Everwhen will be trusted guardians and teachers of the Oceanus 6.

POST-GAME

“Well, I am glad you are not here to tell me of my mother’s demise,” says Captain Rand, discussing the latest adventure of the Wonder Worlock with his dark-clad friend alone at the temporarily-closed bar and recreation section of the New Hope, flagship of the Goff Empire.

“You can be proud of your mother, son,” the mage said, downing a cognac for purely social reasons; he does not need to eat or drink.

“And so Plantageous and the Intzs are settled now on The Shirewood II and Mom is ”˜camping’ there, at least for the present?” Rand asks.

“Aye, and with check-ins regularly from the Everwhen elves as well as Zavar, still helping Plantagenous with his telepathy -- and me, of course.”

“If it is no trouble, I would love to go with you the next time you visit,” the bright-eyed captain in the tan bodysuit says. “Things seemed to have calmed down in this quadrant of Goff space.”

“I told you, boy, that we would first work on loosening you up,” the Wonder Worlock laughed. “Now drop that soda and drink this!”

Moving swiftly, the mage forces a full glass of cognac down the boy’s throat, striking his uniformed back to make sure it is swallowed. The young captain heaves a mighty gust of air after swallowing and his eyes are as big as Nomad’s form.

“You OK, Rand?” the Wonder Worlock jokes, helping the captain back to his feet after he briefly falls towards the floor. The boy gasps again; the mage is “assisting” him by pulling him up -- by his necktie!

<Choke, gasp> “Wow! That was different,” the captain said, straightening and tightening his tie rather than loosening it. “You are just gonna have to take me like I am, buddy. And I am captain!”

“That you are, Rand, that you are,” says a smiling and suddenly flying wizard, who grabs Rand by the necktie and swiftly leads him to the crew’s basketball court, also closed. “Let’s try this!”

The Wonder Worlock and Rand play ball for hours. Rand never loosens his tie once, but he does roll up the long sleeves of his one-piece.

The wizard is astonished!

FINIS