The Wonder Worlock: For Whom the Bell Trolls, Part 1

"The Wonder Worlock and the Ruby of Reality" by Kaci

PRE-GAME

The Wonder Worlock is in combat with the rogue Threlkellian winch Marlee, former queen of that world and empire. She has gained control of Olympia’s vaunted Ruby of Reality. With the right mental focus, the legends say, the stone can make all one’s wishes come true.

But at the height of combat (albeit always a one-sided one, Marlee’s expertise being shopping), the mighty Guided Muscle springs from the right hand of the Wonder Worlock, grabs the fabled ruby from Marlee’s hands – she thought the late scientist Java Lyn said that was not possible – and crushes the reality-altering stone. He then uses the winds of a thousand worlds to send each separate shard whirling through space in different directions, many to the heart of the surrounding stars themselves.

PART THE FIRST

Pick, pick, pick.

Since the great space in the dark pocket universe of the Dread Dungeon of Doom once occupied by the late Dragon of Gaza IV has been empty, Mork the Mad Troll has been slowly picking, if it is possible, at the blackness that, in our universe, would be known as “space.”

Since time out of mind, Mork has been unable to focus his thoughts … about the same amount of time as he has been able to control reality at his slightest whim.

But one day, not long ago, a sparkle of crimson caught his eye in the middle of the dark stuff of the Dungeon where the dragon used to smoke and bitch about the betrayal of his people. A tiny glint of scarlet light, and suddenly Mork was focused on one thing: escape.

Mork had not looked into a reflecticon in years, so he had lost memory of the rock that had slammed into his forehead long ago, a rock which muddled his mind and made him one of the most powerful beings in the great Multiverse!

The shard of ruby in his pocket, the glowing red rock on his brow, the Mad Troll continued to pick and pick at “space,” yelling his trademark laugh all the time to the detriment of the Dungeon’s other captives:

“Noonahhh, noonahhhh!!!!!! Noonahhh, noonahhhh!!!!!!”

Then, one day: LIGHT!

It is an unknown thing in the Dread Dungeon of Doom, but here it was, bursting into the chasm under Mork’s long, scraggly fingernail. Immediately the energetic Dozen Dwarves of Wons Etihw scrambled for the hole, followed by the loping, gigantic Great Ilahk. With a tumble that would do an Olympic acrobat proud, the 8-foot-tall troll fell backward into the hole and was swallowed up by the light. Then the darkness fell again in the Dread Dungeon of Doom, the Dwarves going into action replicating a Three Stooges classic, although they did not know it.

Surrounded by an eerie white glow, Mork finds the shard of ruby missing from his pocket. “Shazbot!” he curses, then something speaks to his muddled mind, telling him the piece of Olympia’s fabled Ruby of Reality has joined with its sister atop the troll’s brow.

A drink, Mork desires now out of the Dungeon, a drink to quench his age-old thirst. The Ruby of Reality receives the request and produces the most amazing red rum for the giant. And then two more.

Hunt, Mork! Hunt for my other pieces that we, that you, may be made whole, the voice says to the troll. So a’hunting he would go, with the power to destroy whole universes in his mad hands!

INTERLUDE

Thousands of years ago and the great wizard Thaumaturge is fighting for the life of his world and his wife on the planet Rubicon IX. The Red Rings of Randak hold the invading hordes of gigantic green trolls off as he tries to transport his wife to safer climes. At that moment, three trolls burst in through his sanctum’s shielding and strip his beloved of her life, also gathering his greatest talisman, the Ruby of Reality, into their misshapen paws.

“Better a noble death for thee, milady, than this!” Thaumaturge cries, and casts the Spell of Ultimate Nullification on himself, the ruby and all the trolls – and natives – of Rubicon.

BLWOOOOOOOOCCCHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then nothing, nothing but tiny red rocks hurling from the blast. The wizard is gone, as is the body of his wife. The people of Rubicon IX and the invading trolls are no more. Better this, Thaumaturge felt, than the race of trolls, led by the demonic Ymok, get hold of the Ruby of Reality’s power.

But the shaman has erred, for the ruby is indestructible by mortal hands. And so chunks of the crimson stone fly through the cosmos, the largest eventually creating quite an impact on the planet Olympia, dimensions distant, and carving its own legend, while a smaller one pelts the pate of a young soldier of Ymok’s army before the nullification is complete, a brilliant tactician and strategist for the troll forces named – Mork.

END INTERLUDE

*****

The waters of planet Oceanus are warmest at this time of year, but there is still a chill in the murky depths outside the city-state ruled by Queen Arema, especially at the memorial to fallen heroes called the All Souls Grotto. It is here this day, book-ended by Captain Gar of the Neptunian Royal Navy and her beloved, the Wonder Worlock, that Queen Arema bids goodbye to an old friend, the elder Intz Tokeen.

“I promise you, Citizen Tokeen, that our goal of repopulating the Shirewood II with Intz as brave and noble as yourself will come to fruition,” says Arema, a tear as blue as the seas leaking from one eye. “You survived the greatest threats known to us only to fall to the cowardice of the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing Vargas, may his damnable soul never see light again. You are gone but will ne’er be forgotten, for your DNAlives on in the Oceanus 6, and they shall know of you from me and from your home world of Oceanus. May your soul rest in peace.”

The Wonder Worlock moves to comfort the Queen of the Seas when his cosmic awareness flares almost visibly to life. It is warning him that something in the Great Scheme of Things is dreadfully amiss, and all the celestial conjurer can do … is see red!

“Shaman, what are ye …?” Captain Gar queries, but even before the words are out of his mouth there is a stench of brimstone in the waters around the Grotto. The Wonder Worlock has teleported … where?

“By my Royale Trident! You surely have to be either fast or patient in the world of that wizard,” Queen Arema says with a slight smile, for a promise of a later night most intriguing was made to her telepathically by the mage before he left her world to find a new threat being presented by the Ruby of Reality.

And there is one other thought she catches from the wizard before he left in a purple puff of underwater smoke: Marlee?

*****

Thunder sounds over a stretch of mountains on the dark world of Ytsan Nobe. Deep in the hollers of these towering earth-cones lays a crystalline cave with a towering center boulder almost as tall as the Great Ilahk. Over the grasslands and through the thickets by foot to and into this cavern has come the reality-shifter, Mork the Mad Troll. An inner voice tells him that here in this cave, after voyages to several star systems through hyper-space over the past few weeks, is the last shard of the grand Ruby of Reality.

For an eternity, it seems to a muddled Mork, he and the voice have been gathering the shards, some thrown by the Wonder Worlock after his battle with Marlee of Threlkel, others victims of the original nullification of Rubicon. To dozens of star systems and even inside the core of stars has been Mork, protected by the ruby, gathering, gathering.

This, according to his “companion,” is Mork’s final stop.

Take the shards from the bag on your waist, Mork. Take them and hold them close to your forehead, a bodiless voice instructs. Now pick up the last little shard, the crimson bit of reality at the foot of the boulder. Join us, Mork, join us!

The Wonder Worlock appears out of thin air, pulling the strange scarlet rock from the forehead of the large green troll, his clumsy hands waving to and fro like some kind of cosmic basketball defense. The mage is two nano-seconds from grabbing the now-reunified ruby when Mork suddenly points his pinky toward the hulking boulder and says softly, “Ymok.”

An explosion of light and Mork is then unconscious, the Wonder Worlock flat on the ground. Towering above them: Ymok, former general of the Roving Troll Army! In the colossus’ hand: the rejoined Ruby of Reality.

“Zootalaris!” is the only word that escapes the space-faring mage’s dry lips.

TO BE CONTINUED …