AN:
Warp Darkmatter: Thanks for your review! It's indeed been a while since I touched anything relating to BLoSC, but I'm trying my best to keep the character personalities intact. As for inspiration, I draw much of it from the different genres of fiction and textbooks I read fairly extensively.
CHAPTER II
Muzzily, Emperor Zurg pried one eye open. Everything in his vision swam with fuzzy outlines, while his head felt as if twenty bee colonies had built a collective hive within, together with some spare ants and crickets. He attempted to raise a hand to touch his face, but the addressed limb merely twitched a couple of times, and slumped back into its former lethargy.
He could register small, very dim spots of light right above, and the softness of bed sheets around his recumbent body. So, he still walked the land of the living, even if his thoughts traveled onwards with the speed of a one-legged spider. This was the old familiar hospital room, complete with the pungent smell of disinfectants hanging in the air.
He tried to utter, "Is this blasted bedfastness over yet? Were you able to mend it?" That, however, collapsed down into a most pellucid "Wzzhrrsshhh?" and a line of spit creeping down the side of his jaw.
"Careful, my liege," a familiar voice somewhere to his left told. "Take it slow and easy now; the anesthetic will wear off eventually. However, if Your Ghastliness can understand my speech—even if your, eh, full vigor has not yet returned—I can deliver you the, um, good and the...well, slightly worse news."
Zurg's other brow beetled ever so slightly, which meant he was not content with the latter part. Nevertheless, he blinked his other eye three times in sluggish succession, which signaled agreement.
"Ah-heh heh, the mind is already as cutting as a triple UV laser, eh? Well, splendid, then. Uh, Your Highness must understand that we practically had to rebuild the optical nerve first, which had been badly shredded in the process, not to mention the infection and the gangrenous membranes in the..."
Brain Pod 501 halted, as it spotted fresh beads of sweat on its master's forehead.
"Eh, not to worry, not to worry! I am certain we were able to repair it dandily. It is merely that I also had to open the left side of the cranium and insert in a handful of biochips and neuron connectors, besides a small bone transplant, to guarantee...eh...optimal functioning. The...erm...damage to your oversw...em...magnificent imperial head proved, regrettably, more extensive than anticipated. By all the trans-neptunians of Oort, whatever happened to you on that journey? Something must have hit you heavily on the back of the head in addition to...well."
Zurg sighed mentally, as physically performing that action brought out only more of those embarrassing blobs of saliva. If he only knew himself...and presently, he hardly yearned to plunge into the swamps of introspection.
"Anyhow, everything ought to have healed up quite well by now, and we may remove the cast as soon as my liege feels strong enough to sit up. Ah-eh, and I assure you, your hair will grow back in a trice!"
At this, Zurg's visage turned into an ugly shade of puce, and the eye not covered with a Zap-O-Recovery®™© casing seemed to bulge out of its socket with fury.
"Only small spots, only small spots!" the servant interjected. "Comb the rest over them and nobody shall ever notice!"
The brain pod, who worked as Zurg's personal surgeon, shrugged in her mind. What was it with that bloke and his absurd hair fetish? Granted, his mind twisted and spiraled more than fifteen corkscrews stuck together, but craters, he always stuffed it inside that ridiculous chamber pot of a helmet, thus completely nullifying the effect of expensive hair care products! Nobody ever saw it anyway! Unless Zurg lead a double life and was, outside his emperor's costume, secretly the disco king of Mahambas 6 or something...
Furthermore, she could not understand his fear of seeing his own body injured even the bittiest amount. He never hesitated to flay, dissect, dismember, mutate, or cyborgize practically anything out of general curiosity. Yet, when it came to pricking his own precious finger with a pin... What a whiner. Of course, drilling sections of someone's skull open never represented a small operation, but nonetheless…
On the other hand, it would have been so easy to stop all this insanity by snipping just a single, strategic intracranial artery, once she had removed the bone. No more rattlepated plots in the lines of conquering the galaxy with the aid of five-dimensional reverse bees that would destroy the Galactic Alliance's crops by traveling in time to the previous year to unpollute the plants.
Fear had once again crept along her nerves and subdued the rebellious thoughts. Nobody could tell how the aftermath would progress; perhaps with minuscule odds, she might be able to hijack a small vessel. Yet, even with the emperor dead, a gaggle of hornets would certainly blast her into ashes during mid-escape.
These days, mutinous ex-stooges were far more easily caught than perhaps five years back, thanks to the renewed security systems. A sturdy quantum-processed monitor listened to all comlinks, fixed and wireless alike, without forgetting to check the unused frequencies for any weird encryption patterns. Outside help was difficult to come by. Unfortunately, the suzerain of all strivings sinister had learned his lesson with shady bounty hunters. Especially with the kind that cropped up in different shapes and sizes, but always wore the same damn costume. Still, even that had lasted amazingly long, until a particularly loyal grub had tipped the emperor off.
Well...
Now, once more, she had let him live, simply because she wanted to live. This existence hardly clung to the fancy promises once made, but outmatched yet many other alternatives, like rotting somewhere under the doodah of a giant radioactive cow. Or something.
She glanced at Zurg while tinkering with a new infusion bottle. The master appeared slightly calmer now, so perhaps she could disclose the remaining tidings. Hooboy, he certainly was not going to take this lightly…
"Now, we tried to match the color as well as we could. With those frightening red lenses on, I assure Your Balefulness that nobody shall ever notice the difference!"
After a couple of hours, the surgeon occupied the monarch's bedside again, together with a smattering of other medical professionals. One grub held up a large, horned mirror in front of Zurg, while another peeled open the layers of healing aids covering the right side of his face.
For once, the emperor sat quiet, merely frowning at his sulky half-visage in the looking-glass. The brain pod regarded this as quite ominous. The man was not clearly himself; commonly he raved, roared, and hurled around bucketfuls of expletives if irate. Now he merely…brooded.
Finally, all the wrappers peeked out of the trash bin and Zurg could unadmire his full appearance with all its wrinkles, sections of shaven skin that had already gained a new, strong growth of hair, and…
A new right eye filling the empty socket that had gaped back at his cronies ever since the return from the cavern beneath the mountain.
It bore a strong semblance to the left one. However, if one looked at the iris closer, they might perceive minuscule mechanical structures merging with the genuine organic cells.
"Well, what do you say, my liege?" the pod cooed. "Getting used to light and various distances may take a teensy weensy while, but I am sure Your Nefariousness shall master all that in less than a ziffy!*"
"Hrrmpffth."
"Now, why don't you try moving it around, instead of merely…eh…studying at your magnificent reflection? The existing muscles we attached to the newly grown ones need a great deal of exercise."
Grumbling, Zurg began to peer across the room. A few seconds passed, and the pristine peeper decided that the medical gimmicks hanging down from ceiling were far more interesting than the purple skele-bunny slippers on the floor, and rolled around to inspect them.
The emperor growled, trying to bring his eyes into focus. This caused the look of the implant to swerve down along the bridge of his nose and into the right corner of the room, so that eventually one pupil pointed straight forward and the other barely peeped from the corner of the socket.
At this, Zurg's face split into a dreadful rictus of a snarl. He grabbed both the grub and the mirror, and flung them across the room and straight against the wall opposite. The latter smashed into a thousand pieces, littering the near grounds with sharp shards of glass.
Any outside spectator might have wondered why Brain Pod 501 suddenly let out a mental sigh of relief. Understanding Zurg, however, represented its own brand of high magic. It required turning all regular logic so many times upside down and inside out, that it, in fact, changed into sheer illogic.
Yet, even chaos concealed an order of its own, and most of the staff had learned to predict the rollercoaster pattern of his mood swings by now. The old temperamental master seemed to be back, instead of this sullen shadow that merely slumped between the sheets. Somehow, she had found this state much scarier than the ordinary mania.
Zurg's physical strength had not visibly diminished during the long rest either, thanks to all the neural stimulants and other ultramodern whatsits taking care of his body. Another adrenaline burst, and he might have turned half of the planet of baby unicorns into a squelchy red mess with his bare hands, had some whimsical wormhole born out of the cosmic radiation suddenly teleported him into such an unlikely place.
"GET THAT BLASTED EYESORE WORKING, and RIGHT NOW!" the emperor bellowed. "Doesn't this just can your kumquats? I am about to conquer the universe here, and cannot look like some bloody poppy-eyed pigeon! How damned credible is THAT? When I last made plans to increase my deviousness level, they never included acquiring a bad case of skew deviation!" He raised one long finger to his lower lip, and tapped at it thoughtfully. "Of course, if all things eventually go awry, there's always that mad scientist appearance to consider, even though I shall never admit the existence of any mental perversion, at least not officially. There's a clear line between insanity and eccentricity. Nevertheless, if I dyed my hair white and messed it up properly...hmm...some strong hairspray might help...hummm...no. Lab coats have never tickled my fashion buds; they do not billow, and furthermore lack that oh-so-dandy aristocratic panache. Hence, I shall not surrender my throne, so my vision must be fixed RIGHT NOW or I shall, well...DO PLENTY OF EVIL, which I ought to do anyhow as an evil overlord, but...hrrmhrrh. Now, where was I...?"
During the emperor's rambling outburst of mixed anger and contemplation, the surgeon pod had fetched a neural tuner complete with electrodes, oodles of multicolored, blinking lights, and a single, large red button. Even though uniting nanotechnology with the elements of organic intelligence played no novel role in the circles of intergalactic innovation, Zurg still considered it so impressively sci-fi that some traditions had to be preserved.
"Ah-eh," the brain pod cut in. "This may twinge a bit, and...well... Your Villanousness must understand that getting used to the implant truly requires exercise. I might be able to adjust the learning algorithms of the chips up to some degree, but, well, like I sai-"
Zurg grabbed Brain Pod 501 by one noodly appendage and yanked it so close to his bared teeth that mist formed on the surface of her transparent brain-dome.
"Then why, if I may venture to propound an inquiry, do I otherwise feel all groovy and hunky spunky, except for this ONE THRICE-DAMNED EYE? Of course, I haven't walked yet, but usually my extrapolation talent skims the underbelly of one thousand on a scale of one to ten."
"It's just that...y-your body has not be-become a-accustomed to it yet," the minion stammered, staring straight into his over-sharp teeth. "If my liege recalls the time when we had to replace a couple of your fingers after that unfortunate incident with those Bathyosian chainsawfish? Ah-heh, I must say that I am still quite proud of the neurally stimulated under-nail lasers; fine for both cutting breakfast salami and getting rid of pesky Space Rangers! Anyhow, Your Wickedness did experience that quite natural phantom limb effect for a while, not to mention the first difficulties with holding objects. We did-"
"Enough with the glibbering gibble-gabble! What about Darkmatter? You twittering twerps took his whole arm off, and, I am told, later enhanced his...well...certain capabilities to attract ladies. Yet he never complained. Much."
"Well, he does not fully share your genetic makeup, not to mention that, eh...you are almost twice his age."
Pursing his lips in consideration, the emperor released his clutch on the brain pod. She wheeled back with relief and dug out a handkerchief to wipe away the zurgy steam that now dimmed almost half of her brain-dome.
"Hmm...you actually may have a point, as rare as that is. Unless you're purposefully messing up with-"
"Eh, l-let us see if I could tune the chips a tad," the servant interrupted, fidgeting with the electrodes. "Now, if my liege would sit back and relax..."
"By the way, did you even bother to fix that nearsightedness problem?" the emperor sniffed. "I daresay I find it rather ridiculous to use reading glasses while wearing a helmet that already includes special lenses. It's like topping a helmet with another...which, incidentally, I have done on construction sites, but merely to pose as a role model for those wee'er grubs too spellbound by the spirit of youth to heed all safety precautions...hrrhmhh..."
"Yes, yes indeed, and the eye can do other, quite impressive tricks too, if I may be so bold as to praise my own handiwork."
Zurg cocked a brow. "Hmmh...and how about my left eye? When I last checked, I couldn't read my naughty lettering well with it either. Or, do I hazard to guess that you incompetent schlemiels forgot that entirely and now I need new glasses again? HUH?"
While the emperor looked the other way, the servant gesticulated at a pair of grubs standing in the doorway, and rapped at the left side of her dome. They instantly pulled their overlord's helmet down from the hat stand and scuttled out with it towards a descending stairway.
"Not to worry, not to worry! The clever boys down in the shop are improving it even as we speak..."
About a quarter of a day and two sturdy meals later, Emperor Zurg had felt strong enough to resume his duties. Now, he strode along a dark corridor somewhere in the western horn of his fortress. His gait seemed steady, and his puffed-up chest radiated assertiveness. His helmet wore a threatening expression, which was, depending on the audience, either improved or turned more ludicrous by the eye patch. The brain pod had tamed some of the implant's foolhardiness with the neural tuner, but the emperor still felt better about covering the pestilential thing, at least until he had hammered a bit more sense into it.
Beneath these imposing coulisses, however, a part of his mind resembled something fluffy and squeaky hiding behind a bush.
He, Evil Emperor Zurg, the scourge of the galaxy, could not show even the slightest outward hint of being mortally afraid. Not even to the walls of an empty passage.
The corridor bathed in a complete silence, save for the clang of his boots against the floor. The shrieks from the torture chambers and experimenting labs somewhere in the bowels of the tower never reached this secluded area. These rooms served as a place for study, incorporating a portion of his extensive library, among other odds and ends.
Clang, clong, clang, the imperial footwear racketed.
Craters. He ought to have carpeted this confounded hole eons ago. Always some bloody bug with equally clonking shoes skittered the whole length of the space when he immersed into reading. Phooh, an extra furnishing project carefully supervised by him would at least steer his mental cycles away from...
Somewhere under his suit, droplets of cold sweat rolled down his skin. The echo of his footsteps reminded him too much of the fatal walk in the cavern beneath the mountain, while that dreadful ring of stones loomed ever closer and closer... Soon, he would bend down to gaze at the swirling shadows deep in the well of...
Suddenly, he skidded to a halt, one clawed hand clutching at his chest.
Had those shadows in the far end of the corridor just stirred on their own?
Breathing raggedly, he stared at the purple gloom in front of him. No, no, no. He must have imagined it. Probably one of the holopaintings malfunctioned again. Sodding nuisances the lot of them; always rippling, and shimmering with the wrong colors. The purple bits had turned out the most vexatious, as they always faded down to pink in spite of frequent projector software updates. Blargh, never should he have bought Compu-Klerm OEM software, no matter how titillating the price. Lousy support, only 'lite' versions of updates available to non-premium customers...not to mention that the software itself was so riddled with anti-piracy protection, that his savviest grubs had not managed to reverse-engineer even the oldest copy of Portholes Panorama yet.
Zurg sighed. Bloody jumping Bok globules, his brainwaves were indeed running amok. Nothing uncanny had ever infested this passage. Why, it was one of his favorites...
Then again, the...thing from the depths of the well resided within the same building now. Whoever knew what kind of influence it might possess over dimensions and reality... Ugh, no, no, NO! He ought not to brood over such matters! The fate of this galaxy and beyond would soon lie on the palm of his evilly glinting hand, and his iron fist would crush, squash, squish, mash, squelch these puny, pathetic, blubbering-
Right there and then, he recalled another hand. A hand formed out of pure darkness, a solid shadow-claw with needle-sharp nails, gouging out his...
With trembling fingers, he touched his right temple. Involuntarily, he began to relive the whole dreadful episode, beholding the ancient well broadening out before him instead of the cozy, purple darkness.
He never had prepared to face any of it. That damned pod had made everything sound so utterly easy peasy lemon squeezy. Merely recite the lines we practiced together, when and if a voice indeed calls up to you, and that should be it. Do not falter, or the spell might break. Hah, effortless as ABZ, verily. Either the sniveling lackey had missed something, or great chunks of crucial knowledge had simply been lost during the millennia.
Nobody had warned him about thunderous roars, earthquakes, or about...the shadow-wight. After he had repeated that string of twangy gargle the minion had apparently devised himself, the revolving shadows dwelling within the seemingly bottomless shaft had suddenly shot up, forming the humongous figure of a headless man. Standing there, on tenterhooks, he had at first regarded the being as something similar to his old Shape Stealer, and momentarily dismissed the whole show as a shoddy jest. However, a quick observation had concluded that this was no insidious nanotech or even a column of exotic matter, but a ghost of some kind.
It had hovered for a while in front of him, its ragged stump of a neck brushing at the root far above, while seemingly measuring him up and down. The echoes of the spell and the grating of subterranean boulders had now faded away, and the hall had wallowed in its erstwhile hush. In spite of an utter lack of wind, the frazzled shadow-robe of the specter had swirled around the emperor, while his own cloak had hung rumpled and inert. Every stretching second had felt like a decade beneath the ghost's sightless stare. The rush of blood had filled his ears, the thwunka-thwunka-thwunk of his ferociously pounding heart sounding like an ominous drum roll that heralded the outburst of something even more sinister. He had not dared blurt out a single syllable, in case something might go hideously wrong.
Do not break the spell, do not falter, do not turn your back on it...
Then, everything had become a painful blur of events. The shadow-wight had extended one hand towards the emperor's gaping visage. Before even understanding to resist, pain had blossomed in his head. His vision had abruptly lost all dimensions, and through his own scream and the searing ache, he had briefly registered the shadow-fist closing over a single, bloody eyeball.
Then...well. He could hark back hardly anything, save for reeling dots of light and the stomach-churning sensation of falling down from a great height. Afterwards, the grubs had told how he had staggered out of the gloom between the two pillar-like portions of root, helmet askew, blood on his hands and badly shredded robes, hauling the very thing they had sought for all these years under one arm. Emperor Zurg himself possessed no conscious inkling about that intermezzo. Neither had the servants apparently ever witnessed anything fitting their master's short adventure, only the blackness in the end of the long hall, never managing to reach it.
His following recollections painted the medical compartment of Dreadnaught with wispy watercolors, while someone droned on about an infection and elevated intracranial pressure in the background. Then, painkillers, antibiotics, more painkillers, sleep, the occasional flat image of a bedpost sitting against a backdrop of laboratory instruments, sleep, sleep, sleep... Sporadic better days had brightened up the feebleness, and he had been able to consult his doctors and the bugs in charge of the ongoing project.
He slapped the side of his helmet with an audible clang. Hairy craters and bloody blazars, he had to compose himself! Weeks had been wasted by shillyshallying in the bottom of a bunk, his precious thoughts wading through endless, sticky mud pools, thanks to all those deuced soporifics! He was an evil emperor and could not afford being infirm! Sickbeds were for ol' grannies that got visited by wolves and kiddies in red hoods, not for virile tyrants riding the summit of their glory! Twice the age of Darkmatter, trauma to his head...hrrmrffgraaah, he would show them the meaning of trauma, once he taught this blasted eyeball not to eyeball the wrong directions all the time!
Huffing, he resumed his earlier march, most of the dread now diluted by the rising irritation.
Grah, why had he ever removed his helmet in the first place? Or, would the ghost just have punctured the theoretically impenetrable zurgazopic xrgogh'hqonic alloy and ripped out his prize anyhow?
He needed answers, and one Yulesockful was not enough. Even a mere enough was scarcely enough.
Reaching the end of the corridor, he pushed the sliding door violently aside. The minion studying a large tome in the middle of the chamber beyond squawked in surprise.
"What went amiss? I demand to know everything, NOW! And you, you blithering moron, are going to teach me to speak that heathen lingo, no matter what it takes!"
Upon a snowbound hill stood three men. Far above, the northern lights hummed and wavered softly, stars occasionally winking in the mists of the red waves. An ancient legend of the land told that a fiery fox ran across the firmament during the winter gloom, batting the snows with its tail.** Hence, even today, the aurora was called 'fox fires' on a local language. Beneath skies somehow so unreal, old beliefs indeed died hard...
Living fire. That was how one might have best described the wild hair and beard of the tallest of the observers. Of course, one also might have dug out a fancy literary embellishment from the myriad pieces of shoddy self-insert fanfiction plaguing the Galactic Alliance's communication networks, where characters like Hime Ravenheart Nekodesu Angeldust Moonbunni charmed elvish princes, pirate captains, and young wizards over and over again with their unearthly beauty—and oftenmost—that kind of hair.
Thereafter, such depictions ran straight into a speeding ten-ton train. He, once in the dawn of ages, might have represented a handsome figure, but the burden of years had ravaged his visage and donated him a slight but permanent stoop. His companions appeared scarcely any younger, and could be outlined comely only by a person habitually squeeing over something fitting the crusty old barbarian stereotype. Of course, even these occasionally did crop up in standard fanfiction. With short roles, they commonly served as a quick lunch for the first troll or dragon, which the leading Mary Sue then slew with the pretty pink sparklies of her magical scepter. Nobody named after mixed anime and goth terminology, however, graced the vista with her presence, so perhaps this was about something else.
The trio had clad themselves peculiarly regarding the fierce coldness. Perhaps they, in those kilts and winingas and odd scraps of leather, actually felt comfortable, as nobody sported so much as chattering teeth. Judging by the ski trail meandering behind them, this was but a single rest point on a longer journey. Now, they frowned down upon a half-demolished fell. Fresh snow had already covered most of the ugly vehicle tracks, but it would take centuries from Mommy Nature to trim the gaping hole in the mountainside.
The completely white-haired man next to the redhead muttered something, his bristly brows crumpling so much that they, together, resembled a furry albino banana. The latter gazed at him in return, giving a grumpy nod. The last man, his gauntleted but otherwise bare arms folded across a vast barrel-chest, acquiesced in merely scowling mutely at the soiled landscape.
None of them desired for this war to flame up, no matter what the old kennings claimed. However, who else could have stolen him but the Wanderer; who else could have torn asunder the home of the one who had only wanted to repose in solitary quietude for the rest of his days? That bloody bastard beyond his stupid bridge had never respected the pacts anyhow, even if this time everyone's hopes had soared ever so high. Had not the maw of time guttled thousands of years since the previous strife? Whatever damned between the high earths and the lower heavens could his motives be?
The redhead's eyes burned as if with an internal fire. No, no, no! He would not abide with the threat of such destruction! There had to be a means to impede this mighty madness...
Footnotes:
* Like a jiffy, but with more zurgishness.
**As is the case of many legends, even this one does not answer the question 'Why?' What did these foxes achieve by this? Were they feeling too hot? Did they hate snow? Did they deem that white contrasted too strongly with their fashionable flaming coats? Only one of those foxes would know, but hitherto none has bothered to contribute an answer.
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