The Occult Experience
Chapter Twelve
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Black magic - The end all be all of blowing things up?
Or
Screwing with the narrow minds of SCIENCE!
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Dib had found that he couldn't rush through the books as quickly as he would've liked. The black magic book said he needed some kind of a well of energy that he was only barely aware of, and even then he hadn't known it existed until he'd tried casting the first spell.
Making fire from nothing could only be described in one word. AWESOME!
But just casting it once had drained his nearly non-existent magical well dry, and that was one of the most basic spells in the book! It had taken several hours before he could cast it again, and the chant was... stupid. "Salamanders guide, light my way"? He'd never be able to use that against Zim, at least, not for a long time. According to the Black Mages Masterbook; if he practiced enough he wouldn't need a stupid little chant, and either the spell wouldn't need as much energy, or else he'd have more energy, or some mixture of the two.
The book wasn't very clear on the differences. Actually, the entire book wasn't very clear. It was a Master level book, not a beginners guide, and that meant that there were a bevy of information holes that Dib didn't know how to plug. But Dib would persevere, and for one very good reason. One of the first spells would conjure water out of thin air! Zim wouldn't know what hit him!
The other two books were a whole lot easier for him to comprehend. Runes were pretty straightforward, translate a sentence into the rune language and something would happen if they were drawn properly and drawn with intent. Screw up the symbols, or just draw them for the sake of drawing them, and nothing would happen. Which was probably a good thing, there's no telling what could happen if someone accidentally drew up a string of them that said something along the lines of "Create a nuclear fission reaction that won't stop".
Bad juju, that.
Thankfully, runes also tied directly into the advanced section of "The Magics of Machinery". Which was conveniently the area where he was making the most headway, and which is where we catch up with him.
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-SKRIIIIITCH- Dib tore off a segment of masking tape and stuck it over the edge of the control panel of the spittle runner in his garage. Pulling out a fine point Blunt-O marker he slowly traced a set of lines and curves on the masking tape strip.
It translated exactly into "Let the creator of this word know and understand all that is within the border of this medium". There hadn't been any other ready-made translation devices or spells in any of the books.
Or at least he was pretty sure of that. The only book that had an index was the rune dictionary.
Dib made three more strips of tape that had the same command and put them around the rest of the control panel, and then blinked a few times when it didn't work.
"Is it supposed to take a few minutes, or...?" He held up the piece of paper that had the symbols on it and stared at it for a few seconds. Then he turned it over. "...Oh. Heheh, duh."
Dib slowly, carefully peeled the tape off the control panel, struggled with it sticking to his fingers for a few moments, and turned it around and stuck it back on. The symbols on the panel didn't change.
"This thing has weapons?" But apparently Dib was able to read it. He pressed the angry faced irken button and a string of Irken symbols flowed down the screen. "Two grappling claws, eight thousand units... what the heck's a unit? Of wire, with three extra claws each. No missiles, no lasers, no doomy rays of doom... It's just a transport and utility ship." More text flashed down the screen.
"I don't care if you can outrun a voot cruiser, I already stole Zim's!" No more text ran down the screen.
"Can you run a diagnostics check on yourself?" Just a few characters of irken text ran down the screen. "You crashlanded, that's why."
Almost reluctantly a tiny orb dropped from the ceiling and a set of purple lights fired out of it, running along to interior of the Spittle Runner.
"Ninety-seven percent intact? Would that three percent be a risk in space?" A sharp beep emitted from a hidden speaker near the hatch. "Oh, uh, okay?"
Dib opened the side hatch of the Spittle Runner and the orb flew out to continue inspecting the ship.
"Is everything on Irk intelligent?" The text that ran down the screen was a jumbled mess. "Now that's just not nice."
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Dib taped down the end of a string in the perpetually empty parking space in front of their garage. On the other end, he tied a large piece of pink chalk. Apparently the only color from the package of sidewalk chalk his sister refused to use.
Keeping the string taught, he quickly crab-walked in a circle, making a big pink target- err, ring on the space his dad parked the hovercraft that one time, way back, you remember? I don't.
Dib didn't either.
Puller a tattered scrap of cloth out of his pocket, he stepped into the ring. Holding the large chunk of chalk awkwardly, he mimicked the symbols of his torn out pocket a few times before scrawling them onto the pavement. Halfway into the last symbol, an idea struck Dib. Or at least he suffered a sudden bout of common sense. He stepped out of the ring, and then he finished drawing the last symbol.
Nothing happened.
Dib tentatively put his hand on the pavement inside the ring. It didn't pass through. He pulled his hand back and took a few steps back.
"That should've worked..." Dib scratched the back of his head and stared at the circle, looking between it and the frayed cloth in his hands. "Oh well."
"Hey Gaz!" The aforementioned girl was staring at him from the front door. "I found this really cool trick, but I'm not any good with it yet. Do you want me... to... There's something behind me, isn't there?"
This last month was the most he'd seen her eyes in years, and he didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Slowly, Dib turned around and stared. Just full on stared.
How often do you see a swirling pink vortex in the sidewalk, honestly. And of those, how many have a pair of massive black tentacles flailing in your general direction.
Actually, that's a poor question. Five times out of seven a portal that isn't properly aimed will be intercepted by an ancient eldritch horror, and unfortunately they tend to be the tentacled kind.
"Well... Poop." Dib didn't even bother to struggle as one of the tentacles wrapped around him and jerked him into the pink vortex.
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AN/ The segments are a little bit shorter, but I'm trying to walk away from near-pure juxtaposition and move in a little more plot and action.