The Wonder Worlock: It's a Small World After All, Part 1

A SHRINKING WONDER WORLOCK, BY TONY SAVAGE

PRE-GAME A

Using a form of cosmic awareness, the Wonder Worlock takes a respite from his battle with Olympian scientist Java Lyn, now armored with the mechanoid remains of the warlord Warfarin, to send his mind forth through the multiverse and its variety of dimensions, to a certain plane reached not long ago by the enchanted blade of King Traven of Threlkel.

“Zootalaris!” the space-farer yells upon his success and quickly unleashes the Vortex of Vipers upon Java Lyn. As the rulers of Olympia look on in horror via holo-communicators, their proudest citizen is drawn by slithering tentacles into a whirlpool, on the other side of which is – the God of Underground Za, a live nuclear bomb! As Java screams and scrambles against the nothingness of the air, the tentacles wrap around the mandroid and usher him to his doom.

The door is closing on him, Java can sense that. Will any come to his rescue? His birds, his Marlee? Then he turns and is frozen with horror. Floating in space behind him is a giant “boom dart,” a Threlkel term, seldom used these days, for a device once utilized by the Founders during the Great Solar Wars.

Then the scientist screams: AAAAAAAUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

And as the aperture closes again, many present, warrior and witness alike, would later swear they heard not only Java Lyn’s soul-shredding scream but a sound their great-great-grandfathers used to talk about, something similar to “ka-boom.”

PRE-GAME B

There are worlds within worlds, worlds beside worlds and worlds made up of the worlds we know or think we know. They are not mere theory; they are as real as a newborn’s first cry or a murderer’s bullet.

Among these worlds is Microsha, an entire “subatomic universe” that is actually a parallel dimension to our very own. Microsha, as one might guess, is only accessible through vibrational attunement (i.e., shrinking).

It is not actually Microsha that is microscopic in size but rather the nexuses which make it accessible. It is thus theoretically possible to enter Microsha from different points of our universe. Its volume is contained within spacewalls which can only be breached at certain points. It is these breaches that create accessible portals.

-- From the notes of Java Lyn during his discovery of “Lyn Locks,” subatomic particles that enable mass to be shunted or gained from an alternate dimension, thereby changing the size of other objects.

Objects … or beings!

PART THE FIRST

Where am I?thinks Java Lyn, believing himself in the realm of Zeus at last. “Father Zeus! Brother Ares! Your loyal son has come home. Take me to my new vessel, Father Neptune!” he shouts.

Nothing.

“By Neptune’s Trident, but this armor of Warfarin is feeling heavier and heavier, and the sky is but strange purplish this day … whatever day it is.”

And then the former Scientist Supreme of the Threlkellian Empire looks down at his feet, and the silent scream in his mind would certainly outspeak his reaction to shrinking into this subatomic universe.

“My hands, my arms, my feet! Melded with the damnable armor of Degaba, and covered with some lumpy, rocky ooze,” Java observes. “By the Gods! This is my skin! What has happened to me and where am I???”

Running like a chicken with its head … well, covered by “some lumpy, rocky ooze,” Lyn makes a pathetic sight in the arid lands of the dayside of Microsha as one recalls all his discoveries, his inventions. And it is just that clarity of mind still possessed by the would-be King of Threlkel that snaps him out of the panic.

That and something … familiar.

These skies, they are of the very same chemical makeup – visually, I am almost sure of it – as the world beneath and behind my Locks, he thinks. By All-Father Zeus! I am on … Microsha??!!

The bomb … the Lyn Locks. Ahh, it does not return yet but I deduce this all. I am a prisoner, a rodent in my own maze experiment. How that stupid Emperor Traven would love this, if someone had an eternity to explain it to him. I …

Then, without warning as he waves his hand: BBOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!

Thus does Java discover his other great ability (and his curse), aside from his sharp mind and yet-to-be-tested strength: He can generate nuclear energy within his body through nuclear decay. Hence, his body now continues to give off low-level radiation. Lyn himself is immune to adverse effects of the radiation, save for the transformation of his physique. He can mentally manipulate the nuclear energy generated and stored within his body, projecting destructive bursts of radiation from his body (as he did for the first time a moment ago).

As this Microshan day wears on, he also discovers he can fly by propelling himself with nuclear energy. By the end of his first week on this micro-world, Java Lyn, using native materials, will fashion for himself a radiometer to measure his radiation output.

By the Hills of Olympus!the monster thinks. I am not now with the Gods, I am one of them!

“Bwahahahahahaha!”

INTERLUDE

Nanoseconds before an approaching nuclear bomb detonates, Java Lyn, drifting helplessly between dimensions, uses not one of Warfarin’s technologies from his mandroid armament but one of his own – his Lyn Locks.

Before a massive explosion, the scientist turns a small device at himself and the sensation rattles his Olympian skeleton! It is that scream – not the death knell of a mad man from a nuke – that the Wonder Worlock and others hear at the close of an awesome cosmic battle.

As he screams, Lyn finds he is also shrinking faster than his mind can comprehend, much faster than in any of his experiments dealing with the Locks.

Down, down, down … one dimensional door closing while another is unlocked by the radiation about the scientist. Thus, Lyn “Locks.”

And as he “shrinks,” Lyn is unexpectedly pelted by the nuclear fallout of the exploding bomb and exposed to radiation against which Warfarin’s armor shields are no protection.

Down, down, down …

Upon crashing to a world he himself named “Microsha,” the unconscious Lyn’s soft scientist skin is transformed into a thick, lumpy hide. The armor and the man have truly become one now, though in a way the late Warfarin could never have imagined. He now has the power of 20 ordinary Olympians – and the body of a demon out of other mythologies!

When he awakens, Java Lyn will find himself trapped in this monstrous form, although still in possession of his brilliant scientist’s brain.

Trapped, trapped in a world he never made, a world he discovered in a drop of fluid under a micrometer: Microsha!

END INTERLUDE

*****

In a whole other universe spins the world of Oceanus. Regarded as a jewel throughout its system for an abundance of unique sea life, few realize there is an intelligent race overseeing this big blue marble.

Beneath the surface of Oceanus this day swims the Wonder Worlock and his good friend, Captain Gar, himself of another underwater world, the faraway planet called Neptunia.

Together they swim off the main underwater continental shelf, lush greenery on the surface and underneath the waves calming Gar as he and his friend trek across a grotto in this alien ocean and into a den of caves occupied by large but apparently harmless octopus-like creatures. Again, as when he first arrived here, the black-clad conjurer has a brief thought of Kat’Wallidur.

Slowly, inexorably, these two great leaders dive deeper and deeper into the caverns of Oceanus, the thick kelp and numerous fish life sometimes making visibility a problem. But soon, a beacon shines before them, an ever-lasting illumination that marks the memorial to fallen heroes called the All Souls Grotto.

Here lies Skrill, native of the planet Neptunia, right-hand man in the service of Captain Gar. Unfortunate enough to be blood related to the notorious Vargas, Skrill met his end when the villain escaped his extra-dimensional prison and took possession of his descendant’s body and mind.

“I’ll be honest with ye, wizard, I am having a hard time without him,” Gar says, not having mentioned Skrill by name in some time. “Every good ship needs a rudder. He was my rudder.”

“Captain, if I may offer some advice, I know how you have been seemingly lost without Skrill … why, even your focus on the great repopulation of your world and this one seems to have gotten lost from your thoughts. Have you given any thought – and I know it is soon – to Skrill’s replacement?”

If I had a dagger now, ‘twould be in yer heart, dark cloak!Gar thinks but merely shakes his head.

“Might I suggest Y’bom Kcid?”

“Queen Arema’s First Guard?” Gar shouts. “An Oceanus guard on a Neptunian spaceship? Workin’ for me??! Are ye daft, mage?”

“We are trying – trying – to make two races as one, Captain,” the Wonder Worlock says. “I think it would go far for cooperative concerns.”

“Aye, that may be …”

A golden glow is all that is left to receive the Neptunian naval officer’s comment. As quick as smoke through a key hole, the Wonder Worlock has disappeared … or rather, shrank!

He is on his way to a realm he never made, a world discovered by whom he still believes to be the late Java Lyn – Microsha – where his cosmic awareness has sensed something amiss. Dreadfully so.

“By the Horned Rim of Astroneth!” Gar curses. “I would love to finish just one conversation with that one!”

And the seas around the All Souls Grotto become cold again as, without his magic companion, the captain’s thoughts return to the fallen Skrill.

TO BE CONTINUED …