The roof was flat and empty. They stepped out of the elevator and Murphy wedged the door open with the chest plating of a dismantled Makina. The hot world was gloomy and dark. Windowless gray rectangular buildings spread out into an endless skyline dotted by energy receiver towers. The thin atmosphere outside was scented with a sulfury industrial stench somewhere between rotten eggs and iron smelting.
Tykö stood up on his own seeming to recover some by being outside. He shook the slime off his mechanical arm.
"I still can't remember anything," he said.
Melock desperately looked at his digital spellbook but his expression told the others it was hopeless. Five Makina gunships sounded in the distance. Murphy stood between the wizards holding her hammer at the ready. Grimble stood to their side and Sebastian appeared beside him. The ships surrounded the rooftop and flooded it with bright light.
Binary warnings thundered down on them.
"Monsieur Grimble, get out of your suit," said de Martín in a slow calm manner.
The front panel opened and Melock allowed him to jump into his hand and crawl into his pack. They stepped away from the Makina suit. Murphy pulled off her armor and dropped it. The ones and zeros language continued to berate them.
"They say go back into the elevator or be disintegrated," said Sabastian as he raised his arms in a sign of surrender.
"We must teleport," shouted Tykö over the gunship roar.
"There is no way to know where we'll end up!?" Melock shouted back.
"Anywhere is better than here," said Sabastian.
Melock closed his eyes.
Antiaintiqal Fawriin was the original owner of Melock's portable tower and he was the last person to ever see the great master of teleportation alive. She dressed in colorful flowing silk that swirled around her body with a mind of its own and wrapped her in ways most women her age wouldn't dare. Only her weather-worn feet, hands, and face peaked out in earthen tones from under her rainbow of fabric. She smiled with chiseled ivory teeth and radiant sapphire eyes. Fawriin had but two rules to impart on her protégés: know where you're going and know where you're coming from.
"To jump into the unknown," she taught, "was to toy with the very fabric of the universe itself. Teleportation can send us to any place in the known and unknown universe, and for that matter, universes beyond our own. To jump to a place you don't know is to run the risk of becoming lost on the grandest of scales. To say nothing of appearing inside solid rock, under a sea of ice, floating in the void of deep space, or in the heart of a star. Many a wizard," she warned, "has gone missing in the learning of teleportation techniques. Instant death awaits the foolhardy and only the most disciplined may master the skill. One must always know precisely where they are headed and the exact point they are leaving from. That is if they ever hope to return."
Fawriin hopped about from world to world from galaxy to galaxy in search of unlocking the secret to accessing the multiverse. Melock liked to think she was still out there, somewhere.
He opened his eyes.
"I see no safe path forward."
"Teleport us, Melock! Unless you want your brain scrambled as bad as mine!" Tykö threatened.
"We need to do something!" yelled Murphy.
"Teleport! Now! Do it! Or I will!" screamed Tykö.
Melock reached out and touched Tykö and Sister Murphy. Sabastian put a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the gun turrets as they began to glow with electricity.
YOU ARE READING
Space Wizards
Science FictionUsually, they say not to judge a book by its cover but....
