“That’s it,” said Gadgorak. “Wind the wires tightly, but mind they don’t cross.”

“You sure don’t make this shit easy,” said Teif.

“I don’t know where the ideas come from,” said Gadgorak. “I just know that they do, and that when they come to me, they are whole and complete, in tact from their journey upon whence they came to me. I hold the whole blueprint in mind, the whole time. It isn’t easy.”

“Your head must be full of more technological lore than anyone else’s,” said Kranen, as he tightened a few screws. “I mean, really. You’d even outdo most of my kindred in that regard.”

“Then that,” said Gadget, nodding at him, “is a great compliment indeed. You come from strong stuff, my friend.”

“Well I like to think so,” said Kranen. “Plus I have a huge penis. That helps.”

“Uh, right,” said Teif. “How many windings, again?”

Twilight washed over the valley, the cliff, and the Castle Greyskull. The quickly-falling shroud of nighttime found Gadgorak, Kranen, and Teif with their weapons nearly finished and ready. All of them were identical to Gadgorak’s. Its metal chassis took the form of a squarish, rectangular backpack about two and a half feet tall by one and a half feet wide, and eight inches deep. He had fashioned it from cobbled-together struts, gears, metal pieces, and wheels using his spot-welding kit and parts from the transmissions of the clockwork horses, under Gadgorak’s careful instruction, with Teif paying close attention as she did what he and Kranen did, albeit with less skill than they had. She had never been much good, she thought, at anything except at splintering targets—nonliving or the other kind.

Shining coils of copper wire stuck out in places on the weapons they’d made. Three exposed, glowing circuit-boards stood here and there—they had repurposed their innards as power regulators—and winked with LED lights or tiny flares of current. A translucent glass sphere, the edges of which forks of plasma danced upon and caressed, sat at the bottom of each of the things, with tubes and wires running to and fro. The upper corner of each device came attached to a large ring of circular, glowing cherry-bright lights, and all this attached to a long vacuum hose wrapped in a large coil of cabling, which ended in a mechanical “wand” reminiscent of the barrel of a submachine gun, like the Road Warriors used; the handle of which reminded one of a motorcycle throttle, the kind the Road Warriors rode.

“And there we go, by the gods,” said Gadgorak proudly, wiping the grease off of his hands and onto his duster, and then clicking the final circuit board into place on the side of the main chassis and attaching the last of the dangling wires to it. His “other self,” Gadget, the one he was in his dreams of the Otherworld, had seen something much like this contraption in a “movie” once. Then, it had been called a “proton pack” and had been worn by a brave techno-thaumaturgical knight of the supernatural known as a “Ghostbuster.”

Mounted in the center of the “wand,” near a set of switches and dials, was another plasma globe. The end of the wand’s barrel supported another small circuit board, wired to a glass nozzle about four inches long. The wand itself hung in a receptacle mounted to the side of the rest of the “backpack unit,” as Kranen dubbed it, to be stowed there when not in use, much like a sword or a bow might be on one’s back. They had fashioned three of these, each now strapped to each of their backs. And attached to the side of each one, was a squarish metal box that had red, blue, and green lights attached to it, as well as a plethora of wires and hoses. The longish rectangular top of the box was split down the middle, meaning the top could part like a pair of doors. Another motorcycle-grip sat at the butt-end of it; a way to lift it off the backpack and this wield it, as well, as a weapon.

A compliment to the particle-stream weapons they had built for themselves, these were of course ghost traps, or Ectoplasmatronic ImAstridonment Interosters: Machines designed to incarcerate phantasms and spirits. It looked nothing like its cinematic counterpart in the otherworld, of course . . . and it operated entirely differently; each one of them could hold multiple ectoplasmic entities, and could hold them indefinitely. Momentarily, Kranen slid his trap of the three onto two tiny holding rails on the side of the backpack unit he wore, toward the bottom, and Gadgorak helped him connect a secondary cable to it, which he then connected to a foot-pedal unit hanging from Karen’s belt. Whenever Kranen disengaged the trap from the backpack unit of the particle accelerator, the foot-pedal unit would fall to the ground near his feet. Excellent. Exactly as he had envisioned.

These devices took an two additional hours to build, in total—for all three of them—as they were much simpler in construction. Though that wasn’t saying much; Kranen had never strained his brain so much in his long life, even when learning the densest of rituals. The only light to work by was that of the three moons and the disconnected eye-orbs of the erstwhile clockwork unicorns, until they disconnected them to use them. By the time they had finished, Gadgorak’s arms had gotten tired and his hands were sore from working with so many fine-grained tools and doing so much delicate, small-scale work for so long. So were the others’, as well. It was apparent that they needed rest. But not yet. Two had to stand watch while one—

“Okay, you two,” said Kranen, “get some sleep. That’s an order from your Wizard.”

“But I said—” began Gadgorak, stepping closer.

“Your medicine man is overruling you,” said Kranen, arching an eyebrow at him and gripping his staff just a bit tighter. “And he is more than powerful enough to fend of any fell beasts, especially with the new weapon you’ve given him.”

“Aye, I suppose so,” said Gadgorak, nodding and giving in. He didn’t like it, but once Kranen had made up his mind about something, it could be more of a chore to get him to change it than it would be to just play along. “C’mon Teif. Let’s hit the sand.”

“Ugh, my kingdom for a mattress,” groaned Teif, as she laid down in the patchy grass and dirt, her saddle-blanket under her head for a pillow.

Once Kranen and Gadgorak had awakened, they joined Teif, who, true to her word, stood guard over them, the wand of her particle-stream weapon in hand.

“Makes you nervous, doesn’t it,” sad Gadgorak, nodding toward the Wraiths guarding the Castle. “To be so close to the other side of Death.”

“I fear not Death, only Dishonor,” said Teif.

“And I fear not Death, either,” said Kranen, “except, y’know, maybe to a healthy extent.”

“I don’t know what exactly I ‘fear,’ so much as there are things that by themselves make me freak,” said Gadgorak. “So I know there are things I am afraid of. Old age, alone. Death, alone. The passage of time with nothing to create, or do, or make. The end of all things. The Dragon ahead of us and the Lady Desirée. That Castle and those Wraiths down there are somewhere on the list.”

“I would hope so,” said Kranen. “As we’ve established, a fear of Death is a healthy thing to cultivate.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Teif, gripping the wand in her hands tighter. “Let me at ‘em.”

They reached the bottom of the cliff easily, the dirt path sliding under their feet a little, bottoming out onto the floor of the valley. The enormity of Greyskull Castle lay directly ahead of them, approximately an eighth of a mile away from their current position. The steel-riveted doors of “Bellie and Reaver High School” stood evenly and level on the ground, beckoning at least Gadgorak closer with pangs of both nostalgia and a creeping dread that filled not only him, but the others as well. From this vantage point, Gadgorak could see no other gatekeepers but the Wraiths—which, thankfully, had not noticed them yet. But of course they were there; and were on duty. They couldn’t be seen very easily, either; they remained translucent until they struck out to wound or to kill; then, and only for a moment, were they semi-tangible . . . and thus, vulnerable to the nuclear-powered weapons they’d constructed.

Gadgorak threw a rock. About a hundred paces away, he heard one of the lower windows of the Castle smash. The Wraiths guarding the entrance fell for it. He watched as two blurry, wispy shapes zipped away from the steel-riveted doors to go investigate; they obscured whatever background lay behind them, and illuminated the path that they took. Gadgorak reached up and over and grabbed the wand of his Proton Weapon, took it in both hands, and stood up, watching where the Wraiths had gone. Checking one last time to make sure he saw no more blurry forms near the doors, he set off toward them.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

They split up, as planned. Kranen headed toward the eastern wing of the high-school portion of the Castle; Teif headed westward. Gadgorak crept toward the center, where the entrance lay. So far, luck was with them; no Wraith attacks. He heaved a sigh, and positioned himself about thirty feet away from the doors. He dialed the Proton Weapon’s wand up to 15% power and turned the handlebar in the mid-section. A slithering, whip-like beam of incandescent, yellow-orange fire shot out of the wand’s nozzle, with bright blue electric arcs whirling around it, and slammed into the center of the twin metal doors. The beam began to smelt the metal, turning it to white-hot sludge. White and yellow sparks flew from the point of impact. The air began to smell like ozone and taste like burnt metal. He chanced another glance around at his surroundings as he tried to hold the slithering beam steady on the melting metal doors. He would soon need to get back to his hiding spot before the Wraiths returned. He would wait there for a few minutes, until the molten metal of the gates had cooled, then make a run for it and—

Gadgorak’s spine chilled and he flushed white in the face as he heard Kranen scream. Teif came running as well, and together they sprinted in the direction of the sound. What they beheld terrified them both.

“GAAAH! FUCK!” screamed Kranen, as burning, crippling shards of pains suddenly shot through his chest like needles made of ice and fire. He fell to his knees and cried out in agony. Something had torn holes in his lungs, or at least felt like it had. He clutched at the place from which the pain spread, and chanced a look down at his chest . . . and there, he saw a blue-white, translucent hand—or the suggestion of a hand—reaching through him, penetrating his flesh and clothes . . . And as it withdrew, the pain lessened. And then as the entire body of the Wraith passed through him, the pain returned full-force, even more excruciating than before. A stabbing, bitter dagger of pure cold, like a bolt of arctic cold and pain shoved through him.

Gadgorak stumbled but managed to get to his feet and stumble forward some more on the rocky turf, only to come face to face with the other of the two Wraiths. It reached out for him with its phantasmal, tattered, ghostly arms. The sleeves of its cloak gave way to spectral, skeletal hands aglow with eldritch energy and translucency. It had no legs or feet . . . the bottom of its cloaked “body” simply faded to nothingness as it fluttered there, floating in the air. The hood of its cloak formed its “head,” draped over the place where a real head should have been. It might not have had eyes, but Gadgorak could feel the cold weight of its glare; it had a look that could turn human blood into ice-water. Gadgorak froze, its gaze holding him captive; he tried to move, but could do nothing. His arms and legs refused his commands.

He stumbled back a pace or two. Raw terror squirted into his veins. Terror as he had never known it before. He had been in many battles, yes. Gun fights to be sure. Tight spots, certainly, plenty of fox holes. But none of that was equal to this, what he felt right now, with this horrid thing gazing into the depths of his soul as he stood rooted to the spot, unable to turn from it.

The Wraith attacking Kranen didn’t let up, and Kranen continued to scream. The Wraith flew through his stomach, he cried out again, and fell. It was like a large jellyfish had stung him in his guts. He doubled over and vomited. But soon recovered.

The other Wraith floated through Gadgorak’s head. Vice-grips squeezed his skull and brain, the bone about to split apart from the pressure. Blood ran from his nostrils, the pain intolerable in its suddenness and dagger-like sting. He briefly saw men and women eating one another’s entrails after slicing one another open with knives. Brutal scenes of torture, of himself being ripped in two by wild dogs that sank their fangs deep into his flesh—he felt their teeth sink into his skin—as they tried to tear him apart. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs didn’t want to work. He staggered and fell to his knees again, and vomited himself. The Wraith ascended, preparing to attack again. Gadgorak almost surrendered to the pain; couldn’t take much of this. He was about to die. Death. The inevitable end. Here it came. The end of his career as an adventurer. And if he died here, in this world, he world he had known and lived in all of his life, he knew on pure instinct that he would never make it back to that “Other” world he dreamed of whenever he left this one when he slept. Even if he made it across the gulf that separated the two, he would not emerge the same person. No. The Wraith thing would shred his mind, rendering him insane . . .

But it was Teif to the rescue! The Wraiths circled them like sharks, preparing for another attack, but she held her ground and fired her particle-stream weapon at the Wraith. Teif reached up over her right shoulder and grabbed the grip-handle of the particle-stream wand, and pulled it free of its receptacle and into her hands, where she held it by the butt-end and central grip, and aimed it at the Wraith. She threw the switch, and felt the machine on her back come surging and whirring to life, like one of the ancient generators the Ancients had buried deep in the ground. Teif twisted the handle-grip in the center of the wand, and a slithering serpent made of brilliant, yellow-orange light erupted from the nozzle. Teif kept a string grip on the wand as the stream of energy threatened to yank it away from her. Bright electrical arcs jerked around the beam as it slammed into the Wraith that had attacked Kranen.

“Take that you plasma-etheric bung-holes!” cried Teif.

Kranen soon joined the party, firing his particle-stream weapon at the nearest Wraith, the one that had attacked Gadgorak. Gadgorak attacked it as well. All three of their slithering proton beams wrapped around the Wraiths rather than actually damaging them. Good, then this was—probably—going to work! Just like in the “movie” from the Otherworld!

“Aw, what’s the matter?” he yelled, a grim smirk on his face. “Can dish it out but can’t take it? Yeah, I thought so. Well how do you like it, huh? How’s that taste? Ready for phase two? Because I sure as hell am!”

Moving the Proton Weapon’s wand to the side, he dragged the energy-stream—and therefore the captive Wraiths, Teif and Kranen moving with him—toward each other, but Gadgorak handled the captive and his energy-stream with renewed confidence . . . and whipped it through the air, intercepting the other Wraith as it tried to escape his confinement beam. The moving energy-streams enclosing the first Wraith “opened up” just long enough to ensnare the other Wraith, as well. In a flash, the energy-flux-knot healed itself with renewed complexity, and both Wraiths were at last theirs.

“Now then!” Gadgorak yelled at them. “Phase three. And we’ll see how good I really am at repurposing a fusion-powered clockwork horse’s innards!”

Gadgorak reached up and over his other shoulder, and grabbed the forcefield-based Wraith-Trap he had fashioned. He pressed a button on the handle to release the cable that connected it to the Proton Weapon. He sat the cylindrical device down on its four tiny wheels, and—still holding the wand and thus the two Wraiths steady in their electro-nuclear Astridon—he knelt down and gave it a firm push toward the action. It rolled out ahead of him and out underneath where the two Wraiths hovered. He took a step back and—thankfully, it had worked!—the foot-pedal unit had fallen when he’d pulled the trap free of the Proton Weapon. He stepped on the rightmost pedal, and the iris on top of the Trap spun open, revealing a coruscating purple and yellow light-show. He felt around for the other pedal. He found it, then stomped on it as he immediately cut the power to the wand, the holding-streams disappearing. The purple and yellow lights inside the trap exploded upward in a brilliant, upside-down cyclone of green sparks, a yawning vortex of purple incandescence, and blue-white lightning bolts that twisted around each other like entwining serpents dancing in a corkscrew helix. The lights ascended toward the heavens and swallowed the two Wraiths as they shrieked. Gadgorak turned away, averting his gaze. A few seconds later, and the shrieks stopped dead—suddenly silenced—and the dazzling display of pyrotechnic fury ceased as well.

Gadgorak cautiously opened one eye and then the other, and glanced over his shoulder at the Trap. It sat there, a tiny red light on the side of it blinking, indicating success. Two tiny green lights lit up beneath the blinking red one, indicating two trapped phantasms out of the Trap’s holding-capacity of five.

“Two in the box! Yeah!” screamed Teif.

“Ready to go!” laughed Kranen, approaching them.

“We be fast and . . .” began Gadgorak, and then all three of them finished the victory chant with: “They be slow!”

Gadgorak looked left, then right, spying the darkness for other potential attackers. He saw none. Then he just stood there a moment and let his heartbeat return to normal— which wasn’t easy; he felt naked and exposed, just standing there—and tried to breathe slowly, deeply, to calm himself down somewhat. The heat of battle faded gradually. Oh dear God, we just fought two Wraiths. And we won. He let out a laugh. Nobody had ever fought Wraiths before and won!

He took off his Proton Weapon’s backpack unit momentarily, and wound up the twenty feet or so of cable that connected the Trap to the it. He put it back where it went, then stowed the Trap back on its two small rails on the side of the backpack unit and locked it down. Then he put the Proton Weapon back on, slipping the straps over his shoulders, and then grabbed the wand again, and once more took a look around for other possible attackers lurking nearby.

Then he sucked up the rest of his courage, wiped the blood from his face, and approached the main gates of Greyskull Castle—the giant metal doors that led into this version of Bellie and Reaver High School, one of which he had melted into goo with his particle-streamer—and then stepped through, along with Teif and Kranen . . . and into a realm that his Otherself, Gadget, thought he had forgotten for good, and that he had left behind forever. But not so far behind that he could not still smell the brimstone.