“Fear him not,” a familiar voice said from just beside Lex. Lex turned to his left quickly, looking at a man of pure darkness, pure power.
“Max?!”
“There are even two more dragons to our left and right,” Maximo said.
Lex looked about frantically.
“Attack, my deadly beasts!” Hypno commanded, and the three beasts, in unison, vomited fire from their mouths with hellish cries. Before Lex could even panic, he found himself many meters above ground. He looked down, seeing he was on a giant three-headed black dragon made of the essence of Maximo. This dragon he was on was far more massive than any of the surrounding dragons. With a thunderous sound, black fire rushed out from the mouths of the black dragon in three directions. The superior fire, the black flames of sure destruction, burnt to nothing, devoured the fire of the weaker dragons and burnt to zilch the dragons themselves.
The black-eyed boy stared at Hypno and The Lantern, understanding full well what had happened.
“Is such mental might even possible?!” the perplexed Hypno awed.
“You lost?!” his master asked, obviously dumbfounded, not believing that a battle of minds could have been done so quickly.
“Not just yet!” Hypno assured his master. Lex pressed his fingers together, gathering in his hands dark power. He gripped the newly made shadowball with his right hand; it was certainly one of the biggest he had ever forged. He jetted off toward his enemies with it.
“Don’t let that thing hit--”
“Relax, master! Remember, my force field is impenetrable.”
An invisible shield! Blast it! Maximo said. Lex blasted with full faith the shield he could not see. The shadowball collided with the wall of opposing force.
Lex watched darkness crawl from the shadowball slowly in streaks, making its way around the strong force field. Lex pushed with all the strength he could find in him. The dark energy was not only resisted by the mental shield, but was being constantly neutralized. Hypno looked on from the inside with a smug look on his face, even with a slight snicker, certain of the integrity of his shield. Lex’s right hand vibrated vigorously as the forceful energy repelled him. The pressure his hand endured pushed waves of pain through his whole body. He was sure he felt the little bones in his hands cracking and caving.
“MAXIMOOO!” the boy cried out through clenched teeth, summoning up more energy to support, probably even rekindle the dying shadowball. The Dark Lantern looked at the pressing boy, trying to remain confident and faithful in his servant. By now, he could barely see through the invisible shield. Darkness had swarmed it almost fully. He could almost taste the incredible dark matter that the boy was spending secondly. “MAXIMO! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” the boy blasted, pushing more energy into the shadowball and forcing it against the shield. His hand, his whole arm was shrouded by Maximo’s energy. The Lantern heard Hypno make an almost perfectly stifled sound of pain. He glanced over at his servant nervously. Hypno grabbed his temples with his index and middle fingers.
“Damn it…” Hypno muttered, clenching his teeth.
“Hypno! What’s happening?!”
“He’s more… powerful than I foresaw,” Hypno struggled to say. “Damn this kid… I’ll have to use that attack.”
“No!” The Lantern shouted quickly and tensely, “You will not kill the boy!”
“I must! The shield will not hold! He’s exerting more dark energy per second than my shield can manage to neutralize!” The Lantern looked about him. He could no longer see anything. The darkness felt heavy and humid. The air was more than tense, and he felt weird sensations all over his body.
The pressure in this hell hole… I couldn’t teleport myself out even if I had enough dark matter left to try. Bloody hell. The Lantern sighed yieldingly. “Do what you must,” he forced the words to escape his lips.
The force field is caving under the pressure, the whispery voice of Lex’s ally informed. Just keep pushing. I’m giving you all I can. You have almost used up the power of a shadow shell thus far.
Hypno, falling upon decades of training, finally managed to ignore the pain in his head, which was directly proportional to the strain the shield was under. He closed his eyes for a moment, clearing his mind of all things. He moved his hands away from his head. After tense moments passed, Lex’s hand shoved the shadowball through Hypno’s shield, rupturing it completely. Push on. Your victory is sure as day follows night.
Hypno finally opened his eyes. Lex couldn’t see them, but Maximo could feel his sudden increase of power. Hypno’s eyes glowed a bright yellow. The colour brightened over tiny moments until it was almost completely white. Lantern slammed his eyes shut as the inside of the caving shield lit up suddenly. Even he had always been impressed with the power of Hypno’s Epic State. None so far of hundreds had seen the zenith of the mindbender’s power and lived.
Suddenly, there was a loud bay and a bright flash. An impossibly great amount of mental power was released as Hypno’s shield exploded in a pulse of bright energy. The blinded Lex felt his body blast off and fly through three walls of something stronger than steel. He made a dent in the fourth and landed on his face, many bones out of place, bleeding all over. All this happened in a flash, in the twinkle of an eye.
The Lantern opened his eyes and looked around, awing afresh at the greatness of Hypno’s power.
“Where are we anyway?” Hypno asked, looking around, realizing he was in a strange place.
“The contract dimension we earlier spoke of,” the man answered, his mind on the treasure he was sure he had lost. Each of the courtrooms in the lobby led to a separate dimension. The most inner part of each dimension was the courtroom; its walls were made of a unique material that was superior to all others in the dimension. Four walls of the same material stood around and squared in the four inner walls, leaving not much space in between, a few feet. Four more walls made another fencing around those, and these walls perpetuated infinitely, for security purposes Lex would soon understand.
Hypno snickered, spinning to see what he had done. His eyes were back to normal. His attack had destroyed two of the walls in each direction, and Lex’s body tore through yet a third wall in whence he flew.
“I hope he is miraculously still alive,” The Lantern said, though not raising his hopes too high.
“Right, as you would have to kill him yourself to gain his power.”
“And that is just what I am going to do!” the man asserted, running toward the unmoving boy. He realized that the boy must have still been alive, as his power was not transferred to his servant.
“Heh!” Hypno laughed deviously. Hearing this snicker, The Lantern stopped in his tracks and turned slowly. He saw the look of betrayal on his henchman’s face.
“You wouldn’t…”
“I think I have served you long enough, Lantern,” Hypno said. “Now you’re just in my way.”
“Hypno!”
The powerful mindbender released a sharp mind wave, cutting the man he served in half, creating a slice in the wall behind the dead man. The Lantern fell on top of himself gorily, dead most certainly.
Now where did that boy go?
Lex leaned against the other side of the wall, panting in pain, his clothes all ripped up and bloody. He heard Hypno’s footsteps getting louder and louder. Damn all this… My back’s really against the wall this time…
“Hahahaha! Come on out, kid! Die a brave death!” Hypno jeered. Lex stared at the wall before him. He knew running hadn’t much sense to it, and his energy was at its very minimum.
Maximo… How the hell do I get outta this one? How do I get outta here? He saw no way of escaping his impending doom. The boy struggled to stand, feeling far more pain than when he was sitting against the wall. He made no sound though. He staggered back helplessly, and his back hit the cracked-up wall. He watched powerlessly as Hypno brandished himself from around the corner. Lex swallowed heavily. I need a miracle… Is this… is this how it ends?! The reality, the hor
ror of death had sunk in.
Lex and Hypno looked up suddenly at the bright light that appeared. “What in the world…” Hypno pondered in speech.
Hmm. Whatever this is, it sure is adding seconds to my life… Lex saw this strange occurrence as the miracle he had prayed for, the miracle he needed. What appeared to be a host of angels descended from the portal of light. The angelic beings came closer and closer, clothed in bright light. “Judgement day…” Lex muttered, shaking. He felt even more afraid than he had felt a while ago when he was sure Hypno would take his life and end everything. As the figures came closer in their dozens, Lex realized that they were dressed very similarly to the judge he was just in court with. Holy… faeces… He knew for sure these beings, whatever they were, weren’t coming to play ring games with him, but were coming to exact their judgement upon him. So I get my own judgement day… This is certainly one for the books. The two looked up as the white-robed, shining beings made a circular gathering above their heads. Most of them appeared elderly. They all held gavels like the one that judge was going to use to erase Lex’s existence.
“Lex Leo,” one of them said, the might and power of his voice shaking the place like an earthquake.
“The Lantern told me about these judges,” Hypno recalled. “Whatever mess this kid is in, I definitely don’t want to get involved.”
“Mindbender, I will return you to your world. Your sentence for being associated in any way with this boy will be considered at a later time.” The man stretched down his gavel at Hypno and a bright light shot out from it. It enveloped him and he disappeared. Lex stood in humbleness and fear at this otherworldly power. He looked around nervously, seeing the world around him phase into another.
He found himself standing in the midst of a circle of high seats which sat in mid-air. The judges descended and sat on them. The boy looked up and turned a few hundred degrees. He felt like he was in a huge arena and a large man-eating lion would rush out from a hidden door to devour him and savour his flavour.
“Lex Leo…” the same judge that mentioned his name before said. Lex turned his attention to the man, who looked to be about eighty years old. “You are certainly an interesting boy,” he began, “one of the few in the complex to achieve trans-dimensional travel… Oh the great mysteries you could have lived to uncover… the greatness you could have lived to achieve… The great hero and legend you could have become…”
“Who are you people?!” Lex blasted with a shaking voice. Their faces were all grim.
“You have committed a very serious crime, Mr. Leo,” a woman said from behind him. He turned to focus on her. “Such a high-level offence has been committed by very few. You murdered a member of the highest organization in the complex.
“A member of one of the highest councils that exist,” another said.
“I didn’t mean to!” Lex defended. “My real target was that lantern guy! He was the one I was after!”
“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” the original speaker continued, causing Lex to turn around again. “This crime cannot go unpunished, and death is not nearly enough.”
“What?! Are y’all gonna to torture me, then?!”
“This will be your punishment, Lex Leo…” The boy listened anxiously. “Firstly, you will die as soon as this meeting is over.” Lex’s heart nearly exploded. The man said it so casually, and there was more! “Also, you will coexist in every dimension in this complex. Each of your lives will be plagued by the power of darkness, and this power will push you to your rueful end. The death you will face here will be by far the most pleasant of all your deaths.”
Lex tried to make sense of all this.
“Alright. We have wasted enough time here,” another of the judges said. She stretched out her gave toward Lex.
“No!!” Orbs of dark energy appeared in his hands, but Maximo could not help him out of this peppered pickle. He looked up and around as all the judges were pointing their gavels down at him. He felt Maximo’s power leave him, and the spheres of darkness disappeared. Suddenly, a bright flash of light engulfed the boy. He was struck by unstoppable death, struck by beings set above him, a council none can dream of messing with and living to boast about it.
Chapter 33: Dead
“No! Let me go! He can’t be dead!” Clover raged, flashing off Kyle and Star who tried to restrain her from going wild. “No! Lex! How could you?!” she cried, her eyes flooding out and red with unspeakable bitterness. The air around her became rigid with powerful mana.
“Damn it, Clover, calm down!” Star blasted at her.
How could she possibly calm down? Kyle considered, looking over at Zen with damp eyes. She seemed to be lost. Empty. She sat wordlessly on a smooth stone with a despondent look. Her clothes were drenched, and she just couldn’t cry anymore. She must have run out of tears. Around her eyes were blue; she looked like she wasn’t even alive. “This tragedy… all of a sudden…” Kyle contemplated, “The Lantern…”
“Leave me alone!” Clover spat, and struck Star with a sudden flare of red mana around her fist. Kyle jumped up as he saw Star fly past him and crash into a tree, damaging it. He looked around at his little sister with wide eyes. She had an insane look on her face, and her veins were bulging out of her flesh. She uttered an unearthly cry that didn’t seem to grow tired. The hard ground beneath her feet soon looked like a meteor had struck it. It was still being destroyed by the tension about Clover, the powerful aura.
“What the hell?” Kyle muttered, watching small stones rise from the ground about her, watching the redness of her mana darken. I’m no expert, but isn’t her mana supposed to be green? Has she jumped two levels or something? He remembered that Azar, who was quite a powerful warlock, wielded red mana. Star stood slowly, holding her head and back. She stared at Clover like Kyle did. They could feel the strange tenseness of the air even from where they stood.
Powerful purple mana soon circled the girl. Her teeth were clenched like an angry beast, and her eyes were fierce.
This power… Star shook, plainly nervous.
“What kind of power is this? I’ve never seen this before… Come to think of it…” Kyle considered. His mind travelled back to the fight he had witnessed between the most powerful witches he had ever seen, the Magmalian queen and her sister. He remembered the unearthly power of Herriot’s sixth grade mana, and knew it wasn’t a power to be taken lightly. “Clover! You have to calm down!” he finally blasted. This is bad… He moved toward her with his commanding tone, but neither the voice of command or of reason would let him get close enough. The young witch thrust her hand toward her brother, and purple mana went after him. As the bright purple splash of mana hit him, he felt immense cold and heat, hotter than fire and colder than ice. The force of it shot him off, and he landed into a body of water nearly half mile away, barely conscious.
“Kyle!” Star called out, looking in his direction in panic. She turned back to Clover, and stared into her impious eyes. She noticed the mana around the girl darkening even further. “At this rate…” Star feared, hoping her speculations were wrong. She slowly walked toward the girl, still shaking.
Clover flashed her hands toward her and purple mana struck her with speed that defied all her studies and previous thoughts. She gasped in fright and temporary confusion, seeing the attacking mana disperse just before her and run along the sides of an invisible sphere. She turned and looked behind her. Zen was standing there, her clothes still drenched in tears. Star turned back to Clover, determined to console her. “It’s alright, little sis… Come… Come cry with me…” she welcomed the girl. The fierceness in Clover’s eyes began to fade a little, and her mana and its strength relaxed until it was red. As she breathed a bit easier, the mana about her lessened, and turned blue, then green, then it disappeared entirely.
Then, she looked past Star and stared at Zen. The vicious glare reappeared in her eyes. “I tried to convince him not to,” Zen said, “but he chose to die.” As she spoke, more tears were made
in her eyes as she thought of a person giving up his own life for her. Clover shook wildly with clenched teeth and a tense face. She shivered like Lex’s ice had covered her.
“Listen, Clover,” Star tried to subdue the reappearing anger. Suddenly, red mana reappeared about Clover. Star walked up toward the girl nonetheless, readying herself mentally to make a fast shift if necessary. Clover shoved the woman out of her way roughly and moved toward Zen with more speed than she had ever claimed. Her whole body was glowing in mana, as it had formed a cloak around her that amplified speed and strength greatly. Despite her speed and sudden increase in strength, Zen could have tracked her movement and put up a shield, but the silent girl raised no defence. The ground cracked and rocks jumped from the earth in fright as Clover pounded Zen with the might of her anger, with a redly glowing fist.
“Zen!” Star cried out, but what could she do? The grey-eyed girl hurled through the air. She slammed into a tree a few meters off and landed on her face.
“Please…” she muttered, bleeding, “Kill me…”
Star flexed her muscles. Goddamn it… She saw the stage Clover was reaching, and was determined to subdue her. Dark purple mana surrounded the girl. Large amounts of the mana revolved around her, the rate of their orbits increasing quickly. Star stepped back, shaking with fear and anticipation. It’s happening… The legendary stage of magic is approaching… Lord Oga… Star watched as the powerful witch began to levitate. Her eyes widened and her heart nearly failed her when she saw the black magic ooze from the witch’s body, from her soul, and orbit her. There was no more red or purple magic there, or any of those playful rainbow colours. Flying around her fiercely was magic only the most powerful sorcerers of all of history could wield. She stared into Clover’s eyes in ghastly fright. In them was a hellish cold. The ground beneath her cracked and caved quickly. Star took a few steps back, unable even to breathe standing too close to such dense power.
“Zen! I will crush you!” the girl shouted with a voice that nearly made the earth tremble.
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