Dyna Meets Mezaros

This is terrible!  I'm trapped here in this hideous undersea nightmare with with no way out!  This is just wrong… dropping in here was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life!

"UNDER DA SEA!" the on-his-way-down Fourth Tenor wannabe belted out.  "UNDER DA SEEEEEEA!!!"

Staring down at her hushpuppies and slaw, Deena propped up her head as the tackily, gaudily costumed scallop-shell-bra mermaids cavorted across the stage and among the S.S. Siren of the Sea's dining room tables.

"Why couldn't we have just gone to the casino or the dance hall, Scott?" she whined.

Deena's beau shrugged.  "They have lobster tonight."

She was about to suggest getting a take-out box as soon as it arrived, but she glanced over at the handsome bearded late 50-something gentleman sharing their table.  He looked as bored and miserable as she was.

"Why don't you just duck on out to the Lido buffet?" Scott offered.  "No point in you suffering here."

She shook her head, not wanting to leave their new tablemate to the wolves. "I don't want this meal to go to waste."

Fidgeting, the older man felt around his jacket's breast pocket and fished up his pipe.  He knew he was in a non-smoking area, but he seemed ready to fire it up and get ejected from this embarrassing dinner theatre.

The eleven year old girl to his left elbow looked up from her rice pilaf.  "You need to step out and smoke?"

He quickly pocketed it again.  "Not really, Charlotte," he warmly grinned and beared it.  "Besides, leave you here all lonely? Unthinkable."

"I'll behave myself, Uncle Marc," she said a bit peevishly.

Scott's sensetive side shone through.  "I'll be glad to keep her company, Mister…"

"Professor," the gentleman corrected.  "Professor Marcade Northkerry DeBuncombe."

"Beg your pardon, Professor.  Deena, why don't you go light up, too?"

"But I don't smo–"

"Well, it's time for you to start.  Go."  And he pointed toward the exit.

Getting up, Deena kissed his cheek.  "Bless you."

"Much obliged, old brick," the Professor nodded and shook his hand.  "Be back for dessert, Charlotte."  And grabbing his umbrella, he led the way out.

***

The two sauntered out onto the deck and watched as the sun set over the Atlantic.

"Beautiful," she said.  "Gonna be a great night."

"Yes.  Deena, right?" Prof. DeBuncombe said as he packed the tobacco in.  "Mind watching out for the Smoke Police?  I doubt pipes are permitted out here, and I wouldn't dream of dragging you into the cigar room."

"Hey, air pollution or noise pollution.  It's all one for me."  Deena said as her acquaintence struck a blue-tipped match and started puffing.  "Though it's been a really great cruise otherwise."

The professor grunted.  "It hasn't been all bad.  But frankly, I'd have rather taken a plane to the Azores and spent the other days in my library by the fireplace with a good book.  This farce of a library on board doesn't cut it."

"So why are you taking the cruise, anyway?"

"Gift from my archaeology/ancient culture colleagues for my 20th year at the university.  I hadn't taken a holiday in over a decade, and they wouldn't take no for an answer."  He smiled.  "And it was for two, so I brought my great-niece, Charlotte.  She'd been babbling about it ever since I promised to bring her.  She absolutely ADORES the trip."

"I could tell."

"She'd been daydreaming about designing her own ship one day.  The Northkerry fleet." He arched an eyebrow impishly.  "And she'd have her own…"

"Don't say it…"

"…Charlotte Northkerry liner."

"Aaagh. Someone oughta throw you overboard.  Or back into that musical." 

"Please don't."

"So Atlantis isn't your thing?"

He propped his elbow on the railing.  "Might be if they got it accurate."

"Oh?"

"I'm afraid they fell prey to the standard issue singing mermaids/undersea paradise/trident wielding king nonsense that's so common."  He leaned in almost conspiratorily.  "The REAL Atlantis legend is a lot darker."

"Really?"  And Deena leaned in a little, too, as if she were seated a club chair in the Professor's study with a cup of tea.

To Be Continued…

Just as he glided through the cavern, he followed the ropes and the pitons that his captive had laid out.  "Right to the surface."  But when he emerged, he saw nothing but rock, trees, light, and the sea to the south.  He grunted.  "It's all below the water."  Rocketing with his staff forward, he formed a shield of wind in front of him, and launched into the sea.

***

Professor DeBuncombe blew a smoke ring over the ocean.  "So," he asked, "do you know anything about Greek mythology?"

Deena cracked a secret smile. "A bit."

He nodded.  "Atlantis' story came from Plato.  Just beyond the Straight of Gibraltar, 11,000 years ago, Atlantis was a giant island, larger than Lybia and Asia Minor combined in the middle of the ocean.  With mountains on the north, and a 330 mile wide plain and canal leading to the sea in the south.  The sea god Poseidon made it for his mortal lover Cleito, complete with rings of water and land around it like a bullseye, to protect her."

***

After going thousands of feet lower into the water, away from the light, Mezaros finally saw it.  The Temple on the hilltop.  Or what was left of it.  He floated past the ruins and perched atop the toppled gold statue of Poseidon in his chariot, towed by winged horses.  Way across the ocean floor, he saw the devastation.The grand number of houses, buildings, forums, were all knocked down.  Columns splayed out across buckled streets.  Walls lay fallen and breached over the ringed moats and canals.  The only thing marring it was the wreckage of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane from World War II.

"Hmmnh," he said.  "This would have been beautiful and glorious if this had been Athens.  Or Olympus.  So close.  Such a shame."

***

"Her children," the professor continued, "which included the giant Atlas, ruled over it.  They had lots of fruits and nut trees, and minerals, including orichalc, second only to gold in value.  Lots of animals, too, even elephants.  This island was a big center of trade, and the people were very wealthy, wise and powerful, having sway all over ancient Europe and Africa."

"Generation after generation they lived simple, virtuous lives.  But soon, all that prosperity started corrupting them.  They got greedy, power-hungry, and simply immoral.  In fact, their grasp for control had sent warriors as far east as Egypt, and on Greece's doorstep.  They had gotten so base and wicked that Zeus and the gods couldn't stand it anymore.  With one volcanic blast, in one night, the gods sent the island and everything on it all the way down to the bottom of the ocean."

***

Mezaros looked up toward the surface.  "Ah yes.  The power.  Still there… and a little nearer."  He looked down over the destroyed ancient megalopolis.  "I will need company for the journey, though." 

He waved his staff.

The rock bottom stirred.  Slowly from within the temples, the halls, the mansions, the barracks, the forums… things moved around.  Volcanic ash and stone swirled around, adding murk to the already dark water. 

As the sentiment settled, Mezaros saw them.  Fossilized skeletons.  Hundreds of them.  Some had stony ossified flesh, others were all bones, but there they stood in the coral and seaweed. 

"Well, why do you stand there?!" he shouted.  "We have a mission!  You will help your new leader get that vile power of light that still lives!  If we cannot exist with the light, neither shall it!"

And slowly, the minions reached down and scavenged for remains:  a pitted spear, a barnacled shield, a sword with one fourth of its blade broken off.  Fifteen of them cast aside the dead plane, one of them wrenching off the propellers for improvised swords.

Thirty minutes later, Mezaros cut through the sea water like a torpedo.  And so did his "freshly" equipped legion of the ancient corpses, bearing toward the Siren of the Sea.

***

"So that's the real story?" Deena asked her new friend.

He peered grimly at her as he tapped the ashes out of his pipe into the ocean.  "Atlantis, if it existed, is now quite dead."

To be continued…

MOOOOOO!

"Hurry up, Jonny, he's taking her away!"

Jonny trained the bright red laser gun at the onscreen flying alien probe and clicked away.  POW!  The spaceship blew up, and the cow gently parachuted back down to earth.  But more space probes came along over the video horizon, after Jonny's herd.  A man walked in the childrens' game room.  "I'm back, dear," he said.  "Hey, Jonny!  You savin' the day?"

"He's keeping the ship safe from the space baddies," she said cheerily.  "Get your news fix, hon?"

"Yeah."

"So what's new back home?"

"Ehnh.  The usual.  Israel and Lebanon's a mess, gas prices are up, crime is up, and Kim Jong Il's sanity is down.  Oh."  And he softened his voice.  "And you know those two pro wrestlers from GRWL Wrestling? Shock and Awe?  From Boston?  They were found dead in their dressing rooms last night."

"What?"

"Yeah. Just before the match, Agganis Arena security found them lying face down and completely shriveled up.  Literally skin and bones.  They think it's foul play because someone left a $2 bill with a green skeleton where Jefferson's face is supposed to be."

Jonny's mom shuddered.  "Boy."  She stared down at her son, blissfully unaware of any offscreen danger. "Am I glad we're out in the ocean where it's halfway safe." 

"Yaaaaaagh!" A crowd of terrified tourists stampeded past the game room's main entrance.  Befuddled, Jonny's dad went there to peek at what triggered the ruckus…

Kablang!  A sword swung down from way overhead, and slammed right betweeh his feet, just barely missing slicing him in half from head to toe!  Then a sound like a cross between a snake's hiss and a horse whinny pierced nearby and whack!  Something swatted the father back into the game room, smashing him across the Skee Ball lanes. 

Jonny spun around and stared with his mother.  Right at the arcade's doorway, rearing back on its hind legs was a skeletal horse with a cavalier corpseman on its back.  It landed on all fours with a clatter, turned to mother and son and stared with its empty eye-sockets.  "Hssshssrnrnrn!" the undead beast whinnied again.  Instinctively, Jonny forgot about the game and started blasting his red laser gun at the bony horse and rider.  All it did was spot a light on them.

Just then a dead soldier flanked the horse and threw an axe at mother and child, just missing them, and slicing the game gun's cable in half. 

"RUN!" shrieked Jonny's mom.  She grabbed her boy as tightly as she could and dashed off, with the boy still clutching the gun and trying to shoot with it.

SMACK-CLATTER!  Looking back, Jonny's mom saw their attacker fly back and clatter into a pile of bones.  "NOBODY assaults MY wife or boy!" snarled her husband.  And he dashed on out past the horse and rider… only to see a thick mass of dead infantry surging through the corridor, raising their blades, and lumbering at him. 

Heeding the odds, Jonny's dad quickly spun around and followed his family, with the corpse cavalry at his heels, and the crawling torso of the decapitated axeman right after.

***

On another deck, stewards brought up the rear of another throng of scared seagoers, shooting fire extinguishers, swinging fire axes, putting up anything to even slow down the cadaver regiment.  One ship chef even threw a flaming shish-kebab through a swordsman's chest.  All it did was make the monster even scarier-looking with the fire.

"Where are all these zombie warriors coming from?!" Charlotte cried.

"Dunno, and I'm not gonna ask 'em!" Scott huffed as he dashed. "Keep running!"

"Where's Uncle Marc?!  And your girlfriend?"

Scott didn't answer.  He was scared that he wouldn't want to know.

***

To Be Continued

Deena and the professor quick-timed it toward the bow, seeing all the zombie warriors crawling up the sides of the ship.  "What the devil is going on?!" DeBuncombe  demanded.  "It looks like a cross between The Love Boat and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger gone horribly wrong!"

Deena then heard the cries and shrieks of the running passengers.  Spinning about, she and Debuncombe saw the frightened travelers scrambling up the stairs, down the deck, corraling all the passengers toward them.  And on the fringes right behind them were more warriors

"They're all headed… toward… us?" Deena wondered.  She smothered a curse.  There was no way for her to slip away unnoticed and change.  She steeled herself, reminding herself to have a backup plan if she ever had to transform in public and chuck her secret identity… assuming she got out of THIS mess. 

"Best get behind me, dear," Prof. DeBuncombe said, stepping in front of her.  And he brought up his umbrella.  "I hope I don't actually have to put my fencing class lessons to work today."

She half-smiled.  "I wondered why you brought that on a ship with GPS programming to avoid bad weather," she muttered. 

"For use on the island," he said shortly.  "Also for this."

He twisted the handle.  Shing!  Out of the umbrella's main shaft sprang a thin, sharp rapier-like blade. 

"You sneaked a sword umbrella aboard?!" Deena gasped.

He brought it to the ready position.  "If you're going to call ship security, then by all means do so."

Scanning the crowd closing around them, she searched for her beau Scott, and the Professor's neice Charlotte. 

But something else caught her eye:  a robed man with a glowing staff hovering over them all.

***

Mezaros sneered down at the frightened throng.  "I thought a ship this size or with such fancily clothed crew would be a royal vessel.  But this craft appears to be one purely for … pleasure?!  The people on it don't look like royalty… or nobility… or even landowners!" 

He shrugged it off.  What bothered him more was that the uniformed folks were putting up a guard, if not fighting back.  Most of them were speaking the language of the girl that had freed him.  Glad he instantly gleaned her knowledge of it when they traded places, he figured he'd best make an announcement. 

"Vsuuqt, jumf!" he shouted.  The air carried his voice like a giant public address speaker.  Right then the soldiers then stopped and formed a circle, surrounding all the crew and vacationers, hemming them all in, readying their weapons. 

"Hear me, you insipid two-legged worms!  I am Mezaros, the grand vizier of all Atlantis!  Do you see these legions of unkillable warriors?  Each of these deadly minions is but a waterdrop in the ocean of my magical art.  You can do nothing against me."

He turned to face Deena's general area.  "And yet, one of you has the gall to host a source of power here, like mine, yet not like mine."  Mezaros' eyes grew even darker.  "This will not stand.  If you do not turn that power over to me right away, I shall send this vessel and each of you on it straight to the bottom of the sea!"

Deena's face turned ash white as she instinctively felt for her waist.  The Belt! she thought.  Then she felt the magic sparkle around her waist as the Belt of Athena started to appear around her.  Quickly, she whisked her hand back and let it fade again.  She searched for a way to dash off so she could hide and transform, but she figured that floating warlock would spot her beeline, zone in on her, and she'd be busted. 

"HunnngreaAAAH!"  A zombie soldier lumbered right at her, detecting magic vibes.  Deena yelped, and was about to pull away, but then a hand grabbed the back of her blouse, and wrenched her back.

"Oh, no you don't!" Prof. DeBuncombe shouted, stepping between them.  "Take that!"  With a lightning-quick slash, he lopped off the creature's head, which landed on the deck with a thunk.  And with a quick soccer kick, the elderly yet surprisingly energized educator punted it over the crowd's heads, over the railing, and into the ocean. 

Seeing that, Mezaros then swooped down right in front of Prof. DeBuncombe, hovering almost close enough to the deck to plant his feed on it.    He glared directly at the Professor, and let a disgusted sigh through his teeth.

"Oh, please," he said icily,  "If you're going to showcase your stupidity and insolence, don't do it with limp-wristed half measures."

Extending his staff, he muttered an incantation too quietly for DeBuncombe or anyone else to hear clearly.  The staff then shimmered, and gleamed, and then an arc of stark light then shot out, arched over the side and into the water.  Nothing happened… for six seconds.

Then there was a churning of the water, as if it splashed against a big rock.  The splashing got worse.  Then the ship began to pitch a little.  Then it rocked back the other way with more tilt.  And then back the first way, which made the cruisers wobble, and struggle to keep upright.  And the crashing of the ocean kicked up some spray for all to see.

THOOMRSH!  Right up from the bow's port side shot up a gigantic, brick red tentacle as big around and wide as a city bus.  Everyone with a pulse, breath, and soul pointed and gasped their exclamations.  Then that monstrous mollusk arm fell like a chopped sequoia tree, and crashed onto the deck with a slam, knocking almost every live person on their cans. 

With a smirk, Mezaros leaned in toward DeBuncombe, extended his staff at the huge tentacle, and put his free hand on his hip.  "You, doddering fool, probably meant something more like… THIS!" 

And with a flick of Mezaros staff-arm's wrist, the titanic tentacle coiled back, then smacked twenty people off the deck in one sweep, Deena included.  Catapulted starboard into the air, she saw Prof. DeBuncombe's agonized, rueful face… and her equally terrified boyfriend Scott at last.

"DEEEENAAAAA!" he screamed, over everyone else's shrieks.

Hitting the water with a painful swat across the shoulder blades, Deena kept her head as she kicked off her shoes to make swimming easier.  Please don't panic, Scott! she thought, that old prof's Zorro imitation was a blessing in disguise.  And speaking of which… she reached for her waist, let that fabled Belt resurface, and felt for the buckle's button.  Okay, Mezaros, time to shut you up, and shut you — down?! "Hggrkh!"

She felt something like a tree branch wrap around her neck and clamp and yank her down.  She wrenched around.  Another tentacle?  She glanced toward the ship's hull, and the wall of dark red giant squid on it, but it didn't look like it was reaching for her.  Another arm clamped her own arms down.  A grey one. 

She twisted— and stared into eye to eye-socket at the skull face of a corpse soldier.  The water didn't mask its hissing cackle. 

It reached for her belt.  She bucked and shook and tried to twist away, but couldn't get free from its literal death-grip that tugged her under.  As she pushed hard to reach the Belt's buckle button, her chest started to burn inside.  And she wanted to gasp… and couldn't.

Her lungs were quickly running out of air.

To Be Continued…