Now, instead of deflecting the incoming barrage of enemy magic, Einstein ordered the sword of Alexander to devour it, re-channeling the excess into his dying body. The sword rebelled at first. But the professor demanded its obedience in the name of Alexander! Reluctantly, the sword obeyed, writhing at the foul taste of the dark magic. In a welling of new strength, a glorious fire raced through the veins of the professor. His heart began to beat strongly and steadily once more. The age spots vanished, and his vision cleared. Professor Einstein launched the final leg of his assault. It was all or nothing, now. This, as the Americans liked to say, was the proverbial 'It.'
With a convoluted double-gesture, Einstein created a coiled spring under his boots and launched himself forward like a circus performer. Flying across the temple, the professor smashed into the startled Owen, driving the High Priest away from the rune. The silver wire attached to his boot snapped free. Dropping his staff, Owen convulsed in screaming agony as blood began to flow from his eyes. As if in response, a deafening thunderclap shook the temple, and the mystic rune on the marble floor flared with a surge of primordial energy.
"The matrix!" Owen shrieked, going pale. "You fool! It's been activated too soon!"
"Excellent!" Professor Einstein grinned in triumph, expertly swaying to the motion of the temple.
"We'll both die, you old fool!"
"Just as long as you go first, traitor!"
Rampaging completely out of control, a violent flare of magic engulfed both men. A swirling hurricane of mystical energy horribly tore them apart, literally disintegrating their bodies into their component atoms. Bit by bit, organ by organ, each man was painfully rebuilt, with pure elemental magic incorporated into every fiber of his quivering body. The pain was beyond imagination, and Einstein prayed for the release of death. But then, with a strident thunderclap, the agony ceased, the aura faded away, and a woozy Professor Felix Einstein found himself standing alongside William Owen inside the cooling pentagram.
"We should be dead," the High Priest muttered in confusion.
"As you wish, old boy!" the professor growled, swinging the sword with all of his renewed strength, not in some magical or special gesture, but simply as a length of sharpened metal.
With a sound beyond description, the Sword of Alexander cut the High Priest in half, cleaving him from shoulder to belly.
Still hideously alive, William Owen staggered backwards. The sword spat forth a fireball that exploded the priest into grisly rain of smoking gobbets. Unabated, the energy ball continued onward to punch a hole through the marble pillar behind the dead man, and then streak across the crater to impact violently on the distant mountains, with spectacular results.
"Church of England doesn't sound so bad now, does it, Willy, my boy?" Professor Einstein gloated, wiping the hot sword clean on the pile of smoldering rags. Allowing himself a small smile of victory, the professor started to head for the altar when he felt a strange tingling in his toes. Eh? What was happening this time? Surely, not another heart attack!
The bronze crown howled a warning, and Einstein realized that the magic stored in the body of the dead priest was beginning to flow back into the rune on the floor, and then into the professor, the only available living human.
Frantically, Professor Einstein tried to leap for safety, but it was too late. The magic poured into him like quicksilver charged with electricity. Unfortunately, he was already full, packed solid with ethereal energy, without an inch to spare!
It was only an awkward trickle at first, then a searing rush that changed into a sizzling torrent! Helpless, Professor Einstein could only scream from the pain of having even more titanic power jammed-pounded-shoved into his writhing body. Reeling with unbearable agony, Einstein fought to retain his sanity as he became saturated with potent ethereal energy. But that proved impossible. Stray leakage radiated from his every orifice, no matter how inappropriate or embarrassing.
A loud slam from across the temple caught the professor's attention. He turned to see Lord Carstairs dash through the doorway. The lord was armed with a bent .44 AutoMag in one fist, and the other glistening from the silver coins held tight between his fingers. Bits of brains and fur clung to the coins. A bleeding gash bisected the lord's right leg, and a makeshift sling torn from his own gory shirt supported his left arm.
Stepping out of the alcove, Lord Carstairs could only gape at the strange and terrible sight of the glowing professor floating in the air near a sort of tribal altar holding an iron cauldron whose contents gave off the most repellant fumes. Sheet lightning crashed about Professor Einstein, and he appeared to be in tremendous pain as the temple of the Squid God insanely bucked and writhed. The marble floor and walls flexed and convulsed as if made of living organic matter.
"Professor!" Lord Carstairs shouted above the storm, limping forward.
Intent upon reaching his friend, the lord did not notice the patch of ice on the floor. He slipped and fell face first into the pool of acid. His features dissolving, Carstairs rolled away, going directly into a ghostly bear trap. The hinged jaws slammed shut on the man, nearly cutting him in half.
"Benjamin, no!" the professor shouted, reaching out for his friend. Instantly, a searing power beam struck the lord, and a sphere of the purest light enveloped him in a soothing cocoon. Gently, the lord was lifted off the floor…only to be brutally dashed against the nearest marble column. The white sphere vanished, leaving the lord sprawled on the floor panting for breath.
"Sorry, lad!" Professor Einstein boomed. "I can't…control… There's too much…!" Just then, another spasm took the professor as the domed ceiling exploded, the tinkling pieces flying away into the night sky. Now the light of the triple moons flooded the temple, and the rune flared, making the cauldron on the altar furiously boil as the rising fumes took on the aspect of a ghastly squid.
Going pale at the sight, Professor Einstein summoned his every ounce of British pluck. Mentally, he composed the most all-encompassing spell of death and destruction that he could possibly imagine, using every piece of biological, scientific, historical, and mystical information that he had ever learned.
"Die!" the professor commanded, the words transforming into visible letters. The altar stones cracked under the assault. The cauldron turned white-hot, and the temple of the living Squid God vanished in a staggering detonation of mono-atomic flame.
The entire mountain crater shook as the lambent maelstrom of cosmic power extended beyond the atmosphere and into space. Earthquakes shook the entire world. Mountains rose and fell. Oceans parted. The pillars of heaven trembled. The whole Time/Space continuum shuddered. Dimensional walls cracked, and stray bits of awesome ethereal blast shot off into neighboring vibratory planes of existence.
***
In another world, in another time, a husband and wife stopped rocking their wooden chairs on the porch of their Iowa farmhouse and gasped at the astonishing display of lights that filled the evening sky.
"Well, hoot," the old man said, spitting a chaw of tobacco into the rose garden. "Will ya look at that, Marge! What d'ya think? Lucas?"
With her white hair reflecting ten thousand colors, the old woman shook her head. "Naw, gotta be Spielberg. He likes those fancy cloud effects."
"Yep, I reckon you're right. Uh-huh."
***
In the Dutarian temple, there immediately followed a volcanic implosion of starkly indescribable power, and everything reversed. There was a dark flash, followed by a rude sucking sound that ended in a crescendo of silent thunder!
Falling to the cracked floor, Professor Einstein heaved for breath, utterly amazed that he was still alive. Forcing himself into a kneeling position, Einstein looked around to see that he was on a circular piece of marble that was surrounded by a field of fused glass. The only other objects in sight were a panting Lord Carstairs lying face down in the smashed alcove, and the noisily bubbling cauldron on the cracked altar.
Dropping his jaw in shock, Professor Einstein simply coul
d not believe that the cauldron was still intact! Starting towards it, the professor could not get close enough to tip it over, as the iron pot was incandescent with heat.
"S-sir?" a familiar voice groaned.
Spinning about, Einstein rushed to the side of his friend. "Lad, you're still alive!" the professor cried in delight. The lord's clothing was in tatters, but there seemed to be no blemish on him, much less any bleeding wounds.
"T-that is a m-matter of opinion," Lord Carstairs moaned, sitting upright. "W-what the H-Hell happened?"
Grasping an elbow, Professor Einstein helped the lord to stand. "I hit you with a healing spell, lad," he explained. "Albeit, a more powerful version than the one I originally asked for. I must have absorbed more magic than I imagined."
"And what of Owen?" Carstairs asked, glancing about the smashed temple. Smoldering debris and pieces of bodies lay scattered everywhere. "I see that you have been busy, but what was the outcome, sir?"
"William Owen is dead," the professor said, glancing at the sizzling hole in the pillar. "Of that fact I can assure you."
"Excellent!" Lord Carstairs smiled, rubbing his smooth face. The lord flinched as a memory of the acid came rushing back, but the pain was only a memory. There didn't even seem to be a scar on his cheeks. Actually, he felt rested and strong, as if he had just spent a weekend fishing in Scotland, instead of battling the forces of evil. "A healing spell, you say, sir? Well, I must admit that… Professor! What happened to you?"
"Why, what's wrong with me?" Einstein demanded, touching himself all over to check for wounds or burns.
"Sir, your hair!" Lord Carstairs stated cryptically, but then he was interrupted by a loud booming noise that came from the boiling cauldron.
As the explorers turned, a thick geyser of black blood shot high into the sky, and then spread out in an umbrella formation to rain down around the cauldron, only to rise up again. As the cycle accelerated, another resonating boom sounded. From out of the depths of the iron pot, a slime-green tentacle arose, its underside lined with suckers. The wriggling limb fondled the air for a few moments, its suckers making wet smacking sounds. Then the tentacle extended from the radiating cauldron until it was five, eight, ten, twenty yards long!
With a grim expression, Lord Carstairs reached for the AutoMag, but only slapped his bare hip. Blast and damn! Bending down, the lord grabbed a jagged piece of fused marble from the broken floor and brandished it as a crude dagger.
"All right, let's finish the job," he said resolutely.
"Righto!" Professor Einstein cried, going for his sword, but the weapon and scabbard were not at his side. A quick touch to his head found only hair. The bronze Crown of Alexander was also gone. Of course, he realized unhappily, they had been summoned for the specific task of fighting the High Priest. With their task completed, the magical weapons must have departed back to their original realm. It was deuced bad timing, but Professor Einstein wished them both well for the assistance provided. Unfortunately, his own battle with evil was not yet finished.
Spying a dagger in the disembodied hand of a dead Squid God worshiper, the professor rushed over to obtain the weapon. But the rigor of death had tightened the fingers into a vise. With no other choice, the professor used a piece of marble to smash the fingers apart in order to obtain the dagger.
Once more armed, Professor Einstein stood in triumph, when a sharp whistle came from Lord Carstairs, calling for his attention. Turning around, the professor frowned to see another tentacle slithering into view from the cauldron. Then came a third, forth, fifth, sixth, more! The white-hot rim began stretching like taffy to accommodate the monstrous limbs. The umbrella of blood stopped as a bulbous mass rose from the center of the tentacles. A single great eye looked about with a fierce intelligence. Spreading beyond all credibility, the cauldron squealed as a second eye joined the first and a pulsating head slid upward, closely followed by the slimy body of a gigantic green squid. Stepping out of the rune, the towering creature flexed its tentacles about in every direction. Its job done, the exhausted cauldron gratefully crumbled into dust.
Nearly filling the temple, the Squid God stood thirty yards tall, its horribly human eyes rotating in opposite directions as it looked about the smoking ruins. The mottled skin of the colossus was a nauseating green, with an undertone of purplish-blue, rather reminiscent of a festering bruise.
In ghastly majesty, the squid looked at the triple moons in the sky just starting to break formation. For a while, the only sound discernable was a faint clacking noise coming from a parrot-beak mouth located under the beast and set amid the undulating tentacles. Giving a regal nod to the unearthly satellites, the Squid God now glanced around the temple, and finally noticed the two tiny humans standing nearby. It smiled.
Supported by its nest of tentacles, the squid smoothly undulated closer, accompanied by a barrage of juicy smacking sounds from its suckers on the marble floor.
With a sigh of resignation, Professor Einstein extended a hand to his friend. "I fear we were too slow, Ben. Well, goodbye, it has been a true pleasure working with you."
In a rush of unaccustomed emotion, Lord Carstairs took the offered hand and solemnly shook. "So long, Felix. At least we gave the bloody thing a run for its money."
"What-ho!" the squid rumbled, the stentorian voice coming from the parrot beak in its belly. "Greetings, my loyal worshipers!" The language was Dutarian, but the meaning was crystal clear to the scholarly explorers.
Rising to his full height, Professor Einstein glared in unbridled contempt at the hideous monstrosity. "By gad, sir, we are no…
Moving fast, Lord Carstairs clamped a hand over the professor's mouth. "Greetings and salutations, Mighty One!" the lord shouted. "We were afraid that you might not actually appear!"
"Yes, it has been a long time," the squid admitted, turning both eyes to look upon the humans. "And yet you two remained faithful. I'm touched. Really, I am."
Raising two tentacles, the beast exposed a smile. "As a reward, I will allow you both to live in this dimension for the rest of your natural lives." It paused, and then added, "After which, I will come back and totally destroy everything here, so be sure to have lots of tasty children!"
Nearly insane with anger, Professor Einstein struggled to get free, but Lord Carstairs easily overpowered his friend. "Your wish is our command, Great One!" the lord yelled. "Please accept our humble thanks!"
"Think nothing of it," the squid chuckled, giving a merry flip of a tentacle.
Flowing away from the explorers, the squid called out terrible words of power while gesturing with multiple limbs. With a crash of thunder and lightning, a long transdimensional vortex appeared. But then the tunnel contracted into a shimmering oval no thicker than an inch.
Utterly flabbergasted, Professor Einstein and Lord Carstairs could see downtown London only a few feet away on the other side of the portal. Although it was midnight at the temple, dawn was just starting to break over the city. The full moon was setting behind Big Ben, its long-hidden side now revealed to be the face of a snarling squid. Clattering along, a horse-drawn cab rolled past the magical window without seeming to notice its presence. Strolling on the sidewalk, a man and woman in formal clothes laughed about the strange phenomenon in the starry heavens.
"So this is the mightiest city in the world," the squid said, the words punctuated by the clacking of the beak. "Hmm, really doesn't look like much, but I have to start somewhere."
As daintily as a ballerina, the colossus began to step-step-step through the dimensional doorway, crushing the cab flat in the process. On the sidewalk, the man cursed and the woman screamed in terror.
"Farewell!" the squid bellowed, the words echoing slightly as the portal started to close. "Keep the faith!"
Without hesitation, Einstein and Carstairs sprinted across the temple, and dove after the departing squid just as the vortex slammed shut.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In a wild explosion of colors, Einstein and C
arstairs appeared on the London street. The inertia of their dive sent them plowing into the rubbery backside of the colossal squid, and the explorers bounced off to land painfully on cold cobblestones. That was when the men rudely discovered that they were, once more, stark naked.
"You know, sir," Lord Carstairs rumbled, grabbing the opera clock off the stunned gentleman standing aquiver on the sidewalk, "this will never become a popular mode of transportation."
"Agreed!" Professor Einstein muttered, helping his friend rip the cloak in half. He then wrapped his piece about his middle in the fashion of a Burmese nappy.
Busily munching on the horses, the Squid God ignored their arrival. With a soft burp, it finished the repast and began picking through the ruins of the hansom cab to stuff the dead driver into its parrot-beak mouth.
"Ummm!" the squid crooned, the noise echoing along the city street. A dozen windows slammed open in response, angry heads popped out, jaws dropped, screaming commenced, and the windows slammed shut.
"This way, lad," Einstein whispered, dashing into a nearby alley, his skinny shanks moving with surprising speed.
As the explorers zigzagged through the back alleyways of London, the Squid God undulated along the cobblestones to survey its new domain.
So this is the currant pinnacle of civilization, eh? Spurting gas flames dimly illuminated the bumpy streets of stone. The buildings were stacked together with no consideration given to safety or comfort. Few trees were in sight, and the smell! There must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people jammed into this dirty city. The air stank of coal soot, and the nearby river was contaminated with sewage and industrial chemicals. Overlying everything was the stench of sex and unfamiliar drugs. The squid gave itself a little hug out of sheer pleasure. Lovely!
Rounding a corner, the monster came to a halt as it spied a crowd of people congregating around a building that fairly reeked of alcohol.
THAT DARN SQUID GOD Page 25
