Industrial Strength Magic - Chapter 270: Australia Gives a Buck

“That seems like the last of ‘em.” Australia Man said, cleaning off his bloody boomerang, a simple piece of lacquered wood that shouldn’t have been able to hold up to the punishment it had been subjected to. “If I’m still alive this evening, me and Lucy are going to have words.”

Perry shrugged. There was a fair amount of plausible deniability at play there, so it probably wouldn’t go anywhere, but she’d definitely hurt her credibility in the future.

“Looks like I got more than you this time,” Wraith said, striking a haughty pose.

“Good job.” Perry said, tousling her hair.

“Ack!” Wraith pulled his gauntlet out of her hair and scowled at him. Naturally his armor’s joints were too fine to catch a human hair, so none of her strawberry blonde mane got caught.

“Now, the hard part,” Aussie Man muttered, looking at the pit in the center of the crater.

From their current distance, the pit hurt the eyes to look at, as the land shifted and warped visually due to the non-euclidean nature of the ‘wrinkles’ in spacetime around it.

Everything about it screams ‘Blue zone’ Perry thought, thinking back on the time he’d been trapped in Neuron’s ‘funhouse’, where bands of reality-altering twisted space spread out like webbing…

And at the center: An egg.

Or at least, an ovoid shape that defied any attempt to penetrate it with scanners. At Professor Replica’s hideout, there had been another that twisted spacetime in such a way that time was slowed for anyone nearby.

When he tried to destroy it, it’d ‘hatched’, flooding the world with –

Perry cut off the thoughts, dancing around thinking the wrong thing.

“let’s get started,” Perry said. “I should be able to speed things up a bit. I can see the wrinkles.”

“We can all see the wrinkles,” Aussie Man said.

“The wrinkles in spacetime causing the wrinkles in the landscape,” Perry clarified.

“Oh.” Aussie Man said before shrugging. “Probably faster than my way.”

“I’m gonna need your help with some of this,” Perry mused to Heather, studying the labyrinthine web of non-euclidean strands that could (and would) turn people inside out if they touched the wrong piece, through a chain reaction event.

“How so?” Heather asked.

“I’m going to need you to…extrude us.”

“…I’m sorry, what?” Wraith demanded.

“A few of the holes are so small that a human couldn’t naturally fit through it,” Perry said, mentally charting a path towards the center. “We’re gonna need help fitting.”

“What does that have to do with ‘extruding’?” Aussie man asked. “Or maybe…I don’t want to know?”

Perry met his gaze.

“You’ll see.”

Fifteen minutes later, Perry had carefully woven them through the easiest path he could find, which had only a handful of really difficult chokepoints, effective dead-ends that would have forced any other supers to turn back and seek more dangerous routes.

Then the ‘extruding’ began.

Perry identified a hole in the web about eight feet above ground, only a few inches in diameter. On the other side was another wide column leading much further in towards the center before it was blocked off again.

Light.exe

Okay, there’s the hole, right there,” Perry said, marking it with his Light spell, creating a floating light hovering in midair. “Everything else will wildly mutate your body.”

“I mean, I could fit, but how are we supposed to…” Perry watched in amusement as Heather realized what he meant by ‘extrude’.

Heather opened her mouth as if to argue, but finally shrugged. “Alright, let’s make this quick.”

Heather narrowed and elongated a foot, and with Perry’s instructions, was able to land a foot on both sides of the lethal barrier.

“Try not to shrug off the effect until you’re on the other side,” Perry said.

“The effects of wh-AbLLL”

Melt.exe

Aussie Man’s question was cut off as he was rendered into a soft, malleable state.

Heather picked the Australian superhero up and made a long, thin tube with her hands and feet, squeezing Aussie Man through the tiny gap in a matter of seconds.

While Aussie Man was slowly recovering from being a soft-serve ice-cream, Perry used Melt.exe on himself and got the same treatment.

It was a strange experience, being completely engulfed by Heather, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to mention it to anyone.

Aussie Man shrugged off the effect faster than Perry, pulling himself into a standing position on wobbly legs, straightening his hat and clothes, which thankfully were reforming the way they had been before.

Perry on the other hand, took the normal amount of time to recover. When using spells on himself, he had to use the full strength to counteract his resistances, effectively suffering the ‘normal’ amount.

“That was an experience,” Aussie man mused, sitting down and waiting with Wraith for Perry to congeal from the droopy pile on the ground back into a superhero.

Mark Nine joined them a moment later, squeezing itself down to a couple inches around before carefully flying through and landing beside Perry.

“U Ee oo aai.” Perry said through his softened mouth.

“What?”

“Just. Three. More. Times.” Perry said, carefully enunciating each word as his mouth regained a bit of solidity.

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“Urg,” Perry groaned as his limbs regained their stability, pushing himself to his feet and raising his arms. Mark Nine leaped on him like a predator securing it’s prey, wrapping him in its protective layer in a fraction of a second.

“Three more?” Aussie Man asked, glancing around the empty area.

“Yep.”

Aussie Man couldn’t see the fluctuations in reality hanging over them, but he also had been around long enough to understand trust.

“Alright. Let’s get this over with.” He said, coming to his feet.

“Next one’s a little bigger.” Perry said, eyeballing the next one and making a circle with his hands.

Perry highlighted the walls of their current path, putting up guardrails made of softly glowing red light.

As they approached the hole in the earth, it began growing disproportionately faster than their approach. From the hills above, it looked the size of a house, or a little strip mall.

After the first hurdle, it had grown to the apparent side of a football stadium, a gaping hole of pitch black that seemed to swallow all light that approached it.

There was some kind of lensing effect at play that prevented the outside from perceiving how big the place was.

After the second hurdle, it looked like an entire valley could disappear into the endless ocean of darkness.

After the third, the hole expanded to reach behind them, creating darkness in every direction.

Perry looked down at the ground and saw that he was standing on a tiny patch of Australian scrubland, seemingly cut out by a fractal cookie cutter, with ragged infinite edges that spread out in every direction in some bizzare combination of snowflake and web.

Behind him, he could see that the tiny patch of land he stood on connected back to the edge of the land via a fractal umbilical cord that seemed to writhe like a living thing.

“Huh.” Aussie Man grunted, glancing back at the thin strip of land behind him, seemingly unphased. “That’s new.”

Perry’s dimensional senses were telling him that other dimensions were heavily overlapping their current one, and the only reason they weren’t falling into the pit was because they were imposing their native dimension just by existing.

Or at least, Perry assumed that was the case, because his dimensional senses, which were usually fairly accurate, had been stuffed up like he was walking through a thick fog with cotton shoved in his ears.

The only thing he figured would do that was more dimensional overlap than he could process.

It was hard to tell how long they walked after that. There was no scenery. The sun itself was snuffed out as the edges of the pit crawled up the sky to swallow the bright sphere.

The nervous jokes faded away after a while, and eventually it was simply silent trudging as they kept going.

And going.

And going…

The change happened in the mind first.

Perry felt a strong sense of déjà vu. He’d done this before.

Perry’s mind strove to remember what it’d been.

He remembered…an irresistible pull.

Perry’s legs continued walking without his permission.

He remembered…color.

The complete black underneath them had bands of faint magenta streaking through it, as though light had been bent through a bubble.

He remembered…the throne.

A sudden burst of panic swept through Perry’s body as a pinprick of light resolved in front of them.

A throne that followed a sinuous path, like a rearing snake, made entirely of corpses. Sitting on top of that throne, a single human, corpses rearing above him, limbs dangling nearly to his head.

It’s your turn now.

Perry’s adrenaline dumped into his body, but it did nothing to stop his forward momentum, as every direction seemed to bend towards the ending that had chosen him.

The figure on the throne turned its gaze toward him.

It’s me.

It was Perry. And he knew.

He was going to sit on that throne for a timeless moment. An instant, an eternity in one, he would starve, go mad, take a single breath, and his replacement would come. He would fuse with the corpses…all of them were Paradox, all of them had arrived just now, at this moment that had been reflected into infinite, fractal suffering.

It’s your turn now. Join the Throne.

Perry’s shaking legs took another step forward.

“No, no, no, no…” Heather whispered, echoing Perry’s internal dialogue. Her terrified voice drilled straight into his brain and set his fears on fire.

Through an effort of will, he turned his gaze toward Heather, and his thoughts seamlessly shifted with his line of sight.

What is the shape of a nail driven through a brain, when reflected on a man’s thoughts? Would you know? Would you be able to map it out simply by determining which parts of your mind are now cold and dead?

Can you perceive the shape of death? We’re going to find out, Paradox. Carving away one thought at a time until you can tell me what you’ve lost…or you’ve lost everything.

Perry’s eyes widened as the two horrifying thoughts fused together. He now knew that the corpses in the throne weren’t dead, but simply versions of himself that were slowly being lobotomized, losing their sense of self as they were dragged through every layer of hell, each a prisoner trapped in their own mind, and Perry was going to be-

Extreme fear detected. Applying Sedatives.Mark Nine displayed on his HUD a moment before he felt a pinprick in his neck.

Perry’s fear drained away. He physically couldn’t bring himself to dread the outcome as he stepped forward.

Those thoughts were completely baseless. I didn’t have any evidence for it. I just…assumed.

Perry squinted, blinked…looked closer. The s-shaped throne of corpses shifted in the manner of dreams, into a driftwood pile with a pair of green gems on top of it, where he’d seen his eyes looking back at him.

For just a moment, it slid back towards the throne of Paradox.

No.

The self-made illusion dissipated completely, revealing an s-shaped, twisted section of dimension energy, seemingly emerging from an ovoid at it’s base. It was nearly impossible for a human brain to process, and simply looking at it could cause the Amygdala to go completely haywire and put the viewer through a hellscape.

Cognitohazards. Not a fan of those.

He glanced over to where Heather was crouched down, holding her head protectively. She’d been subjected to the existential horror of having her very mind mutilated, and Perry had shared it by glancing at her.

Aussie Man…

Perry glanced over and saw Aussie Man pacing back and forth, his loops growing tighter and tighter as his body shook.

Paradox felt an inexplicable sense of dread and claustrophobia radiating off the Australian super, as though the entire world was shrinking down to a single moment, a single thought, and beyond that…the worst thing he could possibly imagine. Again and again…forever.

“Not today, fucko, not today, not t’day, not, not, no, no, nnn”

‘Give them sedatives before they get scarring in the brain and soul.’ Perry instructed Mark Nine.

Mark Nine detached from himself and split in two, skittering over to the other two supers.

Heather didn’t notice, but Aussie Man reacted violently to the black thing skittering towards him, punching that half of Mark Nine with the full force of Australia.

Mark Nine injected the man’s arm before it was blown halfway across the continent disappearing into the distance.

The other half of Mark Nine returned to Perry and rearranged itself, only guarding his major organs and forearms.

“What…the hell was that?” Aussie Man said, his breathing hard, but gradually slowing.

“Cognitohazard.” Perry said. “You’re still infected, I just injected you with something that puts your amygdala to sleep so we can deal with it. You won’t have a strong fear response for a few hours, so carefully choose your actions from now on.”

“That. Sucked.” Heather said, her legs shaky underneath her. She glanced at the cognitohazard and winced in pain, averting her eyes.

“So what now?” Aussie Man asked.

“Now we figure out a way to push it entirely into its home dimension.” Perry said, musing. “Like a dimensional hernia.”

“I know precisely what you mean.” Aussie man said, nodding sagely.

It would probably take some complex magical energies to surgically manipulate the dimensional pressure on either side of the egg.

If Perry could create the right pressures in the right places, the egg would get sucked back into it’s home dimension. Quick, clean, and without a massive battle.

There was enough of Mark Nine remaining that Perry was pretty sure he could do it. It would just take a moment to design the spellwork and a little time for Mark Nine to print it. That was well within the time limit provided by the drugs keeping their fear response suppressed.

While Perry was planning, Aussie Man proceeded to walk straight up to the invisible, interdimensional egg sprouting a branch of pure terror, and kicked it with a single booted foot.

“Hey! Get the fuck outta my dimension, wanker!”

Australia bucked.

Perry didn’t know what else to call it. It was as if all of them were biting flies on the side of a horse, and it had finally had enough of their bullshit.

Australian-flavored dimensional energy shoved the egg violently back into its home dimension, and an instant later, land began lens upward from beneath them, approaching with the speed of love.

BOOOM!

Perry nearly lost his balance as the previously swallowed land lunged up to meet his feet, and a ripple propagated outward through the outback, shaking the bushes and wildlife as the shrinking land reasserted itself.

A moment later, the world was back to normal.

“Cheers, mate,” Aussie Man said, clapping Perry on the shoulder. “Couldn’t’ve done it without ya.”