Space Wizards

36. Mind over Matter

Tykö watched the paladin charge forward and stop dead in her tracks. The Necromancer placed a hand ever so gently on her shoulder and she fell to her knees. She looked up at him like a scared child and did not move from the spot he placed her. Melock's spell of motivation flickered out like the dreams of youth. 

The Technowizard raised his mechanical arm to the sky and called the thunder. Clouds overhead rolled and cracked, acidic rain began to fall, and an enormous bolt of electricity arced out of the sky. The lightning connected with Tykö in a flash of white and jumped forward into the Necromancer. The two were connected for just a second at the speed of light. 

The Necromancer's body contorted as it was shocked and burned. His arms flung out to his sides and his head tilted back mouth open to the sky. Electricity sparked across his teeth and the bolt returned through his head back into the heavens. His thin milky flesh dried and hardened and took on the cracked patina of an ancient sun-baked sculpture.  What remained of his epidermis stuck to his skeleton like the skin of a burnt marshmallow. 

During that brief second of connection, Tykö experienced the complete loss of the youth the Makina bestowed upon him. Time spent on operating tables growing younger in reverse replayed in his mind. The genetic manipulation the 71EEB8 clones performed on his DNA fell apart at a microscopic level. His own efforts to end old age shattered in an instant. Before the arc of lightning left his body, the Necromancer used it to send back a devilish manipulation. 

Tykö could feel cancer growing in his bones. He could feel the misfire of neurons in his mind. He experienced trouble breathing, felt his circulation slow, his vision got blurry, and though he wasn't sure, it seemed as if his hearing had failed him. Outwardly, he got noticeably smaller, his skin wrinkled, his hair fell out, and he lost control of his bowels and bladder. He hunched over wheezing and holding himself up with his mechanical appendages. With his human hand, he grasped his heart and tried to slow his rapid pulse rate. He looked like the thousands of years old man he was. Decrepit, ailing, enfeebled, weak, frail, long in the tooth, blind, deaf, and dumb; he became the personification of old father time. 

"Boo!" said the Necromancer with a laugh.

With his green eyes, ashen black skin, and forked tongue, he was the picture of a hellfire demon. His utterance of this childish word of fright was enough to send Tykö into full cardiac arrest. Melock torn between watching Murphy kneel beneath the Necromancer and seeing Tykö age before his eyes, stumbled in indecision. It was just for a second and that second was all the Necromancer needed. 

Melock slowly breathed the word, "calm." 

It affected both him and Tykö immediately. Tykö was able to get his blood moving again and unclog his circulatory system. He labored to breathe and went from being doubled over to laying on the ground in the fetal position. As for Melock, he took three long in and out breaths while the Necromancer taunted him. 

"You old fools fear dying so much. You need to learn to embrace death. It is only through death that you will be set free from life." 

The Necromancer patted Sister Murphy on the head like she was a pet dog.

"Old men, ha! Do you think keeping young girls around will help keep you young? Look at her, she knows who her master is now. She knows power when she sees it. I doubt this young seeker has ever met a being like myself before? Have you ever met a god before? Is it fear that makes you kneel, my dear? Or is it admiration? Attraction? Lust? Dare I even say, love?"

He rubbed his hand into her face and smeared frozen tears and buggers around. Murphy didn't resist, she didn't even move. Her only reaction was to kneel penitently before the Necromancer.

"One on her knees, one prostrated in a ball, now how shall I crush you?" he said turning his full attention to Melock. 

Dark vile energy surrounded the Necromancer. He swirled it with his hands and launched it toward Melock. Melock felt gravity shift and drag him toward the darkness. He raised his arms and launched burning light into the wave of black. The Necromancer replied with water from the firehose of his palms. Melock froze the water to ice and the Necromancer evaporated it into gas, shifted water vapor into methane, and ignited it with a snap of his finger. Fire engulfed them all and out a thousand meters in every direction. 

Melock slapped his hands together and the licking flames turned into a whirlwind of Monarch butterflies. The swarm of colorful insects swirled around the Necromancer and glued themselves to his skin with sticky delicate wings. The Necromancer swung wildly at the fluttering assailants. They covered his face, head, torso, arms, and legs. It got harder for him to move as they chained his arms and legs together. Five seconds later, he was mummified by thousands of softly flapping wings. 

Melock adjusted his top knot, dusted off his robe, and ran his fingers down his beard. He opened his left hand and bright blue butterfly flew out, crossed the short distance, and landed on the head of the swarm. 

"Sometimes something simple is all we need to bring a little light into darkness," said Melock and his words echoed into the Necromancer's mind. "You seem to be the oldest of us old fellows. Do you have nothing to teach us from your millennia of existence?"

"Eons," replied a booming voice channeled through the blue butterfly. 

"Ah, so you will talk to me," said Melock. 

"I have existed longer than your world. This world was once mine. One of hundreds that bowed to my will. Now they're all empty wastelands. Thousands of years of painstaking work foiled." 

Melock felt the darkness attempting to press into his mind. The will of his rival forcing itself into his reality. His eyes twitched and watered. The hair on his arms and neck stood on end. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. 

"The good Sister Murphy, here, would never bow to you on her own accord. If you released her, I'm sure she would stand up and put an end to your torment," suggested Melock. 

"She's nothing. A misguided follower, a slave, hardly worthy to lick the shit from my boot!"

Murphy felt her consciousness free, became aware of the situation, but could only observe without moving or speaking. Melock's kind words vs. the Necromancer's taunts reminded her of her good vs. evil purpose. Her new focus was on freeing herself; though no physical means she possessed was strong enough. She watched and waited, praying to the gods of luck for an opportunity. 

The butterflies began to turn black and their fluttering noticeably slowed. The blue one on the Necromancer's head glowed brighter. Melock focused his attention on the mind sink. 

"I bind you with resin from the tree of life. Reveal to me, what you hide." 

Melting butterflies turned into stickier amber liquid that hardened in a shell around the evil being. From within the orange cocoon two swirling green eyes looked out and one blue butterfly phosphoresced.