Gadget—or as he was known in the mystic realm of Aeòthánia, Gadgorak Prime—blinked himself out of the trance he had momentarily drifted off into. A lifetime of knowledge and memories that weren’t—yet were—his were slowly coming back to him, just like they always did . . . and back, and back a little more each time, memory oozing into memory, episode after event after encounter. Every monster he had fought, and beaten; every beating he’d ever taken; every scar on his heart His sadly-deceased party were now mostly dead or eaten . . . save for him, the Archer Teif, and the Wizard Kranen. The Positronic-clockwork unicorn upon whose saddle he now sat, blinking absently at the twin suns in the sky, and the ominous, rising, faded triple moons of twilight, gave an artificial whinny. It was an unsettling sound; Digital , artificial . . . and yet natural-sounding, both at once.

“It always creeps me out when they do that,” said Kranen.

“Why?” Asked Gadgorak. “It’s just . . . what they do.”

“But, the idea of it—a living being criss-crossed with a nonliving thing. It’s scary what some of my brethren got up to, in the old days.”

“That it is,” said Gadgorak. “But who else can say any different? We learn from our ancestors’ mistakes. We go on. We grow. And that’s about it.”

“Well I don’t know about you two,” said Teif, the Archer. She had a permanent smirk on her face and mischief twinkled in her eyes, “but I’m ready to shoot something already. Give me something I can realistically aim at, and I’ll be all the happier I came along.”

“Speaking of shooting things,” said Gadgorak, “I have an idea for a new—well, not new, it’s been thought of before, by keener minds than mine—a somewhat new weapon that will even the odds between us and those Wraiths down there.”

Karen sat atop his mount and peered through his binoculars. He rode a similar positronic-clockwork unicorn, although clearly an earlier iteration of it, that the beast’s makers had improved upon with time. He thought the words ‘the beasts’s makers’ because there was no other name for them. Once, they had come here, in their spaceships and star-liners, and had descended upon Aeòthánia and its native peoples like a swarm of locusts to harvest the most precious substance in the universe—Thaumanyte. Thaumanyte made Magick itself possible; it was what the Wizards inhaled in gaseous form to work miracles and turn mundane reality inside out; it allowed them to access the hidden realm of Twizion, that force in the universe that made dreams become reality, events to take shape around ideas and beliefs, and that provided the infrastructure for all of reality itself. Kranen looked out over the dry, dusty valley before them, pock-marked from the impact of asteroids and other debris. The sands were a uniform amber color, and lay in folds and dune around their goal: Greyskull Castle itself. Two Wraiths, even--Gadget could see them without the aid of his friend’s binoculars—guarded it by spiraling their ghostly forms around it, and ensconcing it in tattered, shadowy spirit-matter. There was no moat or gate. Just Greyskull Castle, tall, inimitable, and frightening to behold. Inside, Gadgorak remembered from the Legends, lay a labyrinth. An unsolvable one, or so Legend had it.

“So you two seeing what I’m seeing?” Said Gadgorak.

“Yeah,” said Teif, smiling. “A target-rich environment.”

“No, I mean besides that.”

“A Fortress of Ultimate Darkness?” Asked Kranen.

“No, I mean besides that.”

“Well what?” they both said to him.

Gadgorak smiled. “I’m seeing us, capturing and enslaving those Wraiths so that when loosed, they’ll attack the nearest thing to them . . . which will hopefully be the Boss.”

“The what?” asked Teif.

“Oh,” said Gadgorak. “Something I picked up from that . . . that other life told you I sometimes find myself living. Memories that are just as real to me as my own. Somewhere in there is the term ‘Boss.’ It means, ‘the main villain you must face to defeat the central challenge’ in any game where strategy is a factor.”

“Heh, strategy,” chuckled Teif. “A thing we don’t have.”

“Not yet,” said Gadgorak, lowering his binoculars. “But give me time. Speaking of which—the idea I have forming my head—d’you guys know that I’ve no idea how the beast I’m riding o on works?”

“Well, beats me too,” said Kranen. “That knowledge was lost a thousand years ago, when the Great Burn seared the World, just after the Visitors’ departure, and it unlocked the power of Magick. Wizards rose again. The power of Psionic Force and the Presence of the Willworker among the masses became commonplace once more; the ability to enforce one’s paradigm of reality onto the physical world around one, to whatever extent, heedless of the damage and destruction it might cause, also became a thing. But the knowledge of how these Positronic-clockwork animals actually work? Shit, that knowledge is long gone. We just accept them now, as part of our world. Forgetting that they too, are Magical.”

“Very poetic,” said Teif. “But what has that got to do with getting into the place down there?”

“You’ll see,” smiled Gadget.

Kranen was correct. Nowadays, most Wizards deuled over burned-out stretches of thee world’s wasteland and claimed mastery over those who called them home . . . places where farmers tried in desperation to get their crops to grow and where the people dreaded the roaming bands of Road Warriors, the diesel-punk barbarians who had arisen after the Burn. Clockwork animals like the one he rode upon plowed fields that hadn’t seen a sprout or a bloom in a decade. Yet still they plowed. Water had become somewhat scarce, too. Ancient fusion generators provided power to everything, but for how long would they last? And everywhere, virtual reality and the remains of the Great Datanet, the Psychocosm, provided an easy escape for the weak-minded . . . He shook his head. Aeòthánia was a ruined world; a world beyond saving. Heroes here were hard to come by here. And yet, he was known as one. Somehow.

“I don’t see how,” said Teif. “Unless you mean us to make some weapons from rocks. I doubt a slingshot would do much good, here. We’re not Mike Hanlon of the Great Prophet’s work, after all.”

“No, but we’ll wind up being the next best thing,” said Gadget. “Just you wait. My inventorish brain is already thinking of a good idea.”

“Well I hope so,” said Kranen. “Because Magick won’t dispel those things. It’s all but useless against them, because Magick marshals the laws of nature. Those creatures, by definition, are supernatural.”

“Right,” said Gadget, “so we’ll need weapons that can deal with the supernatural.”

“But is there such a thing?” As Teif.

“Not yet,” said Gadget. “Not yet, but there will be.”

He tried to concentrate his thinking, but it was hard when faced with such an immense hurdle to clear. Because lording over this part of the world, was the fortress of darkness that stood before him now, there in the valley. Since the Time of Legends, the valley below had become dry, dusty, and barren, the only sign of life among its wrack and ruin the immense Greyskull Castle.

And here was the odd thing, and the part that distracted him most: Against all reason, against all logic, against all odds . . . Gadgorak found himself staring down into the valley from the precipice of the cliff at a semi-replica of a place he knew from his dreamworld life—that other place he sometimes visited whenever his mind wandered, wherein he was but a young man again, named simply Gadget, who, like him, had a knack for inventing fantastical devices . . . but, unlike him, Gadget had the worst self-esteem problem ever conjured by any witch’s curse. He supposed they were each other’s “Walter Mitty.” Wherever that term had come from. But yes, this was what he had come so far, far away to find; he and Kranen and Teif had crossed the width and breadth of all of Aeòthánia to face this final test; that much—that three adventurers would survive to reach this far—had been written of in the Legends of Prophecy. But none of that bore on the fact that Greyskull Castle bore a striking resemblance to a place Gagdorak knew from his thoughts of his life as “Gadget.”

As impossible as it seemed, like something lifted from the pages of some Dark Wizard’s grimoire of menacing architectural magic, the lower four levels of the Castle were identical—well, sort of—to those of a place in that other, less-real world he sometimes visited: A place marked as 66012 Albatross Ave, in downtown MegaCity One . . . also known as “Bellie and Reaver High School.” He shook his head to clear the “memory” of it away, and did a double-take at Greyskull Castle, disbelieving his eye when first he saw the uncanny resemblance. But the Castle remained when he opened his eyes—unavailingly real, but impossible all the same.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You know this place,” said Kranen, with a large dose of curiosity in his voice.

“Aye,” said Teif. “We can tell by that look on your face, G.”

“I do,” said Gadgorak, his voice a husk. Haunted, and bitter.

How could a place from his “other life” actually be here, physically? How could it have stood here a dozen thousand years or more, and part of a structure dozens of thousands of years old? It made no sense. He filed this puzzle away in his mind for later, tough as it was to get over; a dense and complex mystery to be solved after the Mission was completed . . . and a mystery that, to tell the truth, tugged at strings whose other ends frightened him. He would solve it. He would figure this out. But only in time. Perhaps once the riddle of the Castle was solved.

However, Bellie and Reaver High School wasn’t quite the same here as it was there. No; the “school” portion of Greyskull Castle was not made of “sensible” things, or things that would be sensible in that other world; things like concrete, stately steel, and other statuesque building materials one might find in abundance there. Though it shared the same basic architectural design as its cousin in that world, here it had been fashioned (refashioned?) from blackened cracked stone. Crimson, hot-glowing lava ran between the cracks of its mortar, the iridescent blood through the veins of a rock-like monster stirring to life after centuries of slumber. Two of the school-building’s “wings” branched off diagonally toward them. Its nearly squared walls, made of crisp, blackened stone were marked at intervals by barred dungeon windows with a slight arch situated over each one, topped with a gargoyle. Smaller, needle-like castle-towers extended upward out of the school, erupting out of the structure like stalagmites—or upside down fangs. Twin spines of stone stood on either side of the entrance and held the roof aloft; big letters spelled-out the school’s name in an imposing gothic typeface.

Two giant, steel-riveted double doors framed the entrance. And shooting up out of the “high school” portion, was the rest of Greyskull Castle itself: A spiraling, miles-high, cankerous structure made of charred concrete, charcoal, steel, onyx, agate, jasper, jade, silver, iron, and obsidian, a dark and terrible, fiercely-glowing shadow-rift in the fabric of the daylight. It reached high, high into the sky, stretching toward the heavens like the thrusting, groping arm of some undead giant zombie. An enormous finger of smoldering stone, an endlessly-rising monolith of staircases, balconies, swooping arches, and shadowy windows that stared like empty eye-sockets. It rose upward like an infinite spear aimed at the eye of God. Its tall, sooty spires soared into the air, like the skeletal spinal columns of fallen troll-giants who had long-since turned to stone with the harsh sunlight here, blossoming into gruesome parapets that pierced the clouds as they ascended beyond sight, dwindling as they approached the stars themselves at their invisible apex.

“How?” asked Teif. “How have you seen this before, except in drawings in books of Legend?”

“I . . . I can’t quite explain it,” said Gadgorak, and he seemed to drift off into thought as he spoke. “There is . . . somewhere, out there in the stars . . . or across the barriers between the planes . . . this other version of me. He’s conscious, right now, but I can’t read his mind or perceive through his senses like I normally can. But he . . . lives this wondrous life . . . in a world of plenty, and splendor, and riches; a world unspoiled—at least compared to this place!—by war and famine and death and chaos. A place called America. Some sort of standard-bearer, or supposed to be, of other nations in that . . . that other world he’s a part of. So alien, yet so familiar. And right now I sense that he’s on the verge of some discovery . . . or in the process of making it out. I hit a brick wall when I try to think of what it is.”

Gadgorak did not regard himself a hero; he was just a man struggling to survive, he constantly told himself, and to do the most good he could in this world . . . though there were times he wondered if it still mattered that anyone in it chose to do good at all. The powers of Evil and their twin, twisted offspring, Malice and Cruelty, practically owned these lands now, and beacons of hope were few in number. The Childlike Empress had long ago fallen into the Grey Sleep. Rule over these lands had been handed over to the Noble Sorceress, Lady Desirée Gadget Discordia, and though the Sorceress tried her damnedest to fend off the swelling hordes of Tyrorks, and challenges from Dark Wizards, it was an ongoing battle with no end in sight. It had been the Sorceress, Lady Desirée, who had given him this Mission . . . who had sent him here, into the heart of Aeòthánia, to Greyskull Castle itself, to do the impossible . . . to retrieve the legendary Crystal Sword called Dràchynthýr—or Dragon Slayer, in the Olden Tongue—to pry it loose from the grip of the Dark Forces that held it here, and then bring it to her, to her Fortress of Light in the land of Thetanonica, so that she could use it to defeat the evil Crimson Dragon, the form that “the Demiurge,” the False God, took in this world. A Dragon that dwelled in the Northlands of Destiny, somewhere far off, in a mystical place that both was and was not. A Dominion of its very own, nestled inside other Dominions. And more strangeness than that, too.

“I hope your idea is a good one,” said Kranen. “As for me, I’m fresh out of inspiration. That place there nearly sucks it from your bones, man.”

“No doubt,” said Teif.

“I think we’ll prevail,” said Gadgorak. “With luck and the right kind of firepower.”

“And where is this firepower?” Asked Kranen.

“It’s in the positronic-clockwork beasts we use as steeds,” said Gadgorak.

“Oh great,” said Teif. “You’d have us dimantel our only form of transportation? Oh, marvelous idea. Just marvelous.”

“We need the parts to make the weapons we need!” snapped Gadgorak. Teif drew back a bit on her mount, and glared at him suspiciously and angrily. She breathed through her nostrils—hard—and narrowed her archer’s eye at him. He knew that look.

“But we’ll be stranded!” said Kranen.

“You can sue Magick to open a Portal back to home,” said Gadgorak.

“No I can’t!” said Kranen. “I don’t have that kind of power within me!”

“But Dràchynthýr has it within it. So long as we succeed and get that sword, we have a way home.”

“If you say so,” said Kranen. “I stopped questioning your logic long ago. I trust you.”

“As do I,” said Teif, puffing out her chest and sidling up beside him on her mount. “I trust you as well . . . though watch your temper. Or you might wind up with an arrow through your skull.”

“Duly noted.”

Gadgorak gazed down at the Castle. Wraiths guarded the entrance; ethereal beings that wielded deadly phantasmal forces. He could see their translucent, wispy forms as they glided back and forth before the steel-riveted doors. Who knew what else awaited them on the other side of those doors? Tyrorks, certainly. Plenty of them. Dark Wizards? Almost a certainty. And him, with no Magick but what Kranen could summon. He did have his trusty ray gun with its many settings—but that too would have to be sacrificed to get the parts they needed, in order for his idea to work

“Well, light’s getting low,” said Kranen.

“Yeah, it is,” said Teif. “Should we camp here, tonight? This close to the Castle? I highly doubt—”

“No,” said Gadgorak. “No we won’t do that. Not exactly. We’ll stay up, long enough to make the weapons. Then two people will take watch while one sleeps, and we’ll do it in three one hour shifts.”

“Insomniac here, volunteering for two watches,” said Kranen, putting his hand in the air. He laughed, sounding slightly uncomfortable.

“We’re almost out of light,” said Gadgorak. “We’ll have to work by torches and campire, and the light of the unicorns’ eyes, for as long as they last during their disassembly.”

The sun was about to set; its light was almost gone. Gadgorak looked to the sky, to the stars. Dràchynthýr could only be retrieved from the Castle’s hold on it when the stars were in the right alignment, and they would only remain in the right alignment for another twelve hours or so. They had arrived barely in the nick of time; they had been waylaid by those Mutants in Grimdark, and had gotten here two days later than he had wanted to. So they had to make their move tonight, before dawn. They all knew it, but no one wanted to say it.

“So you really mean to do it,” said Kranen, a slight tone of offensive in his voice. “You mean to disassemble all three of these noble steeds, who have borne us through thick and thin.”

“Yes,” said Gadgorak. “But not because I want to, necessarily.”

“Well then—”

“But because we must,” he said. “Trust me. The weapons we will wield once the job is done will be of far, far greater use to us where we’re going next. You said you trusted me. Do you truly?”

Kranen frowned, then thought a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “I do. I just hate what has to be done, is all.”

“As do I,” sighed Teif. “But as Gadgorak says, it’s necessary. Think of it this way—these ‘noble steeds’ will be giving their life-forces up so that we—or Lady Desirée—can slay a great evil that has held sway here far too long.”

Gadgorak sighed a deep sigh. So, this was it. This was where his journey ended. Or perhaps began anew. He breathed in through his nose; the wind carried with it the sage-like smell of the desert-growing creosote bush, what smelled maybe like some carrion off in the distance, and the fresh, crisp odor of the ozone left behind after a lightning storm. He knew what came next. He needed to fashion new weapons for he and his friends, something that could deal with those Wraiths on their own ethereal terms.

“Okay guys,” he said at last. “Got it. Just finished drawing the plans in my mind’s eye, thinking up the steps to go about it. And I’m ready, friends, if you are.”

He dismounted with a nod. He patted the clockwork horse on its metallic neck, and quietly thanked the creature for its sacrifice. He went to his saddlebags, retrieved the extensive and rather elaborate portable toolkit he’d brought along. He reached up into the horse’s fiber-optic mane, found the master power-switch, and hesitated only a moment before he turned it off with a sigh. So sad. The pitiful creature. Its life of service was over. The horse’s head drooped, the light in its eye-orbs going out. It remained standing, though its posture slackened. He took a moment of silence to appreciate the fact that a living soul had passed from its circuits and into the afterworld, gone forever from this world into the next.

“Blessed be the Maker of all things,” breathed Teif, closing her eyes briefly. “Bless the Maker and his Passing. May he leave in his wake that which we need, that to which we aspire.”

And so, high upon the cliff overlooking the arid valley and Greyskull Castle, in the light of the quickly setting sun, Gadgorak, Kranen, and Teif set to work upon building his their latest—and greatest—weapon. One that would require a sacrifice.en for good.