By Aladdin
Edited by Christopher Leeson
Edited by Christopher Leeson
THE
WOUNDED WORLD:
A Story of Mantra
A Story of Mantra
Originally written 2006
Posted January 21, 2020
Revised February 21, 2020
Revised February 21, 2020
CHAPTER 17
THE ROAD TO HELL
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night..
William Blake
I did a high-speed swap to remove my Blackbird uniform and get into my golden armor. I needed its magical enhancement to rev up my magic for the coming encounter with Gus. If my son was to be saved, I would need access to every watt of power available to me. "Here I am, Gus! I yelled into the sky. Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!"
"I don't want to hit a girl,” a telepathic voice came back, “so I'm going to have some of my friends do that for me!"
Distantly, I saw a shimmer. Using my wizard sight to make up for the lack of light, I saw a variegated troop materializing into terrible reality -- a surreal mob that looked like characters out of a low-budget video game. About twenty feet above their heads, Gus was shouting orders, while brandishing a Nintendo joystick like a bandito would wave a revolver.
Lauren had witnessed Gus creating creatures like these before. Tibetan mystics called these things "tulpas." I understood that they were not really alive and needed to continual energy injections to keep from powering down and fading away.
“Get them!” my little boy bawled out. The command started a rush in our direction: ninjas, thug knights, aliens, G.I.'s, golems, zombies, barbarians, fish-men, karate babes, and some tentacled horrors that looked seafood gone bad. This was an assassination attack aimed explicitly at me. Would Gus have been less homicidal if he’d known that behind my silver mask I was his mother? Somehow I doubted it. He simply couldn’t access his better nature.
I sent thought-alerts to Yrial and Strike, who were hidden in the vegetation. “Get ready, set….”
Hardcase and I fell back from the tulpa warriors, luring the attackers into a cul-de-sac in which we could hit from three sides. At the last possible moment, I gave the mental shout of: “Go!”
Yrial flew from her hiding place and deployed herself with me front, while Hardcase did a high jump to gain a new position on their left flank. Simultaneously, Strike rushed to a position on their right.
I began firing magical bolts, harsh, unvarnished magic which both burned and shocked whatever it hit. The “soldiers” were never alive, so there was no reason for anyone to hold back. I took out a pair of zombies off of the leading edge, mostly because they were the ugliest things I could see. Though they staggered and fell, they didn't stay down. It seemed that Gus’s assault plan called for rebuilding the tulpas as quickly as they were knocked down. These manifestations were only game pieces, puppets obeying the rules that Gus was unconsciously laying down.
These video characters came on wildly, but without order. On our side, Hardcase and Strike were hammering at the enemy’s flanks, while Yrial I represented a wall in front of them, an entrenchment defended with magical firepower. As fast as we'd burn off limbs or blast torsos, the missing body parts would rematerialize. Pretty clearly, we weren’t going to win by fighting a defense; we’d only waste our ammunition and sap our magical energy. A direct attack on the puppet-master was going to be needed.
"Grownups never play fair," the lad complained from aloft. "They won’t let kids gang up, but they do it all the time!"
Amazing! We were only four people while he was trying to overrun us with a small army. To Gus, this lethal business was just a sport. On the good side, the damage we inflicted was draining the boy, but, unfortunately, he didn't seem to be tiring very quickly, though he was using off-the-scale magic. Gus couldn't possibly be that strong on his own; he had to be feeding off some outside energy source. Instinct told me that he had a tie-in with whatever power supply was creating those green bolts in the sky.
With near-godlike potential, it was only the lad’s lack of experience that was holding him back. Unfortunately, if he somehow got inspired with better tactics we were dead meat. Myself, drawing on the method that Lauren had used to foil NM-E at the Mall, struck the entire tulpa host with a ghosting spell. All of a sudden, their fists, blades, zaps, and bludgeons were falling on us as harmlessly, as if we were empty air.
"Good thinking, Mantra!" Yrial shouted. I acknowledged her, but without much pride. How could I crow, having borrowed from an innovation created by a high-school kid with no real battle or magical experience?
Overhead, Gus just hung there, seemingly perplexed. He hadn’t yet grasped what, exactly, had gone amiss. His state of bafflement, fortunately, left me with an opening. Inspired by Lauren once again, I discharged a narrow magical bolt to strike the Nintendo stick clutched in his fist. The boy, physically stung, gave a shout and dropped the device. The loss of his security blanket seemed to throw him into a tizzy.
"Hardcase, the plan!" I yelled.
Tom Hawke charged through the mass of ineffective phantoms, a gas grenade in each hand. With an amazing jump, he bounced up to Gus’s altitude. Before the startled boy could react, the bombs clutched in Hardcase's nearly invulnerable fists went off. The explosions threw him to the ground, but he landed on his feet.
Gus, too was blow away, like a feather on the wind. Still airborne, but moving erratically, he was overcome by a coughing fit.
“Hit it, Strike!” I yelled. My badly-dressed buddy launched his rocket-propelled capture-net. The netting enveloped Gus while subjecting him to a series of painful electrical pulses.
The shock-treatment messed up Gus’s concentration and brought him down to the grass with an audible thump. Even as we hurried his way, the lad rose above his distress and threw everything he had into the fight. He struck out in all directions using lethal magical bolts. But his simultaneous cries of pain affected me worse than would any physical attack that I could have suffered.
"Move, Mantra, now!" Yrial shouted. She was right. We had to get this over with, so we could stop hurting him.
At that moment, Gus’s tulpa army seemed to be losing its material substance, fading away like ghosts. Yrial and I dodged though their mass as if they were not there. The next step was mine; I had to put my boy to sleep, and then stand aside while the Amerind witch rendered him unconscious with a coma spell. I ran up while carrying out my spell-casting effort. Strike, on his part, was waiting for our signal to cut the current.
But as bad as things were for Gus, the lad was refusing to call it quits! The more we did, the more aggressive be became. His magical resistance seemed to be operating instinctively and, to my dismay, my slumber spells weren’t having any effect. The bolts of energy kept coming, wild and unaimed, striking about us like whips of lightning. One of them hit my magical shield and enough of it filtered through to make me cry out with pain. Additionally, its flash had filled my vision field with colored blotches that kep me from observing what was going on in detail. I staggered up closer and resumed throwing dreamland spells at Gus. If this wild fight didn’t end quickly, I guessed, there was a very real chance that someone was going to die.
Suddenly, the magical lightning storm blinked off, as if by the throwing of a switch. Hardcase was bellowing orders: "'Strike! He's out of it! Kill the charge!"
"Stand back, Mantra!" shouted Yrial as she slipped in past.
"Quick, Yrial!" yelled Hardcase. "Do your thing! Now!"
The witch shoved me away from Gus and stood over him with her arms performing ritual passes, but right seconds later she gave a gasp. Instead of pressing her enchantment attempt, she abruptly knelt down to examine the boy.
"Yrial!" I cried.
"M-Mantra," the green-clad Stranger stammered, “he’s fading away!”
I threw myself down on the grass beside to her.
"Careful, ladies!" Strike warned.
