Dodge Danger

by Anthony Newton

  He found himself imprisoned in darkness once more. His freedom over, his destruction halted.

  Fenris howled his outrage, but there was no one to hear!

  The light subsided and Twice examined the rune-circle. They were still arranged in way he had placed them, but at the centre stood a curious black idol. It looked like a wolf, lizard and chicken all rolled into one. Twice shuddered. Suddenly the whole mine started to shake and tremble. He bolted from the chamber. As he hurried for the exit, dust and rubble falling all around him, Twice fancied that he heard a wolf’s howl far off behind him, as though it had come from a dream. Then the chamber behind him collapsed and buried the shrine under a ton of rubble. A great cloud of choking dirt billowed over him. The evil was over.

  However, as great cracks raced across the ceiling, Twice realised he was still in great danger. He sprinted for his life.

  Dodge coughed and groaned, struggling to rise. Susan hurried over to help. He was battered and bruised, but he would live.

  “What happened?” Susan gasped, but Dodge just shook his head.

  Fenris the wolf, son of Loki, was gone. Yggdrasil no longer trembled and Dodge sensed that something had changed. “I don’t know sweetheart!” He grasped her close to him, as much for support as for affection. “But I think that it’s over.”

  They gazed at each other and kissed passionately, lost in the moment and glad to be alive.

  Then an eerie, high-pitched cackle echoed around the cavern.

  “Over, Mr Danger? Not quite!” Yue Tiansiang and his army of men had finally arrived and were standing above them. Dodge counted twenty-five rifles pointed at them, and in between them stood Yue Tiansiang with his arms folded into the sleeves of his robe. He looked terribly ancient but still evil and commanding. The Chinese villain laughed again.

  Dodge squared his shoulders and faced Yue Tiansiang with a tired sigh. He did not need this after his battle with Fenris. He noted the Chinese villain’s army of thugs, each with his gun pointed at him.

  Susan waited expectantly, sure Dodge had some decisive action prepared.

  Dodge raised his hands.

  “Very wise, Mr Dodge Danger!” Yue Tiansiang stepped slowly forward, supported by two of his men. He looked very old; his skin like parchment. “I have enjoyed this game, it would be a shame to kill you before you could witness me claiming the prize!”

  “Listen to me Tiansiang, this won’t go how you imagine,” Dodge began.

  “How can you possibly know that?” Tiansiang snarled.

  Dodge glared at Tiansiang, but the man couldn’t contemplate failure. He was gazing at the tree with wonder.

  “It is wonderful!” he whispered. Dodge knew that he was fighting a lost cause. He had seen that greedy fervour in people’s eyes before. Tiansiang’s obsession had consumed him. Dodge recognized and feared that look - he had occasionally seen it mirrored in his own eyes.

  “Mr Danger, you have been one of the worthiest opponents I have ever faced!” Yue Tiansiang directed his attention back to Dodge. “This is the beginning of my greatest achievement! All of China will soon be in my grasp. I will crush that buffoon Mao Zedong like an insignificant bug. I will rule over China with an empire of terror and violence. No man will defy me! I will build an unstoppable army and after we crush the Japanese, we will storm the continents and countries until I control everything!”

  “It’s nice to have ambition,” Dodge smirked.

  “I have the ambition and soon I will have the time that I need! I will have all the time anyone will need!” Tiansiang laughed malevolently.

  “You are a fool!” Dodge hissed.

  “Bow before me, Danger! Bow before the master of everything!” Tiansiang demanded.

  The guards nearest him clubbed the back of his knees with their rifle-butts. Dodge slumped forward, tired and sore after his confrontation with Fenris. All he could do was watch as Yue Tiansiang continued towards the great tree Yggdrasil.

  Susan helped Dodge back onto his feet. They watched as Tiansiang collected some leaves from the ground around Yggdrasil’s mighty trunk.

  “At last!” Tiansiang breathed exultantly. He broke the leaf into tiny pieces and held them cupped in his talon-like fingers. He turned to face his men and held the vegetation up triumphantly.

  His men cheered and some fired guns into the air.

  Yue Tiansiang lifted the leaves to his mouth and took a mouthful. Slowly, because he had very few teeth left, he chewed them up. Dodge watched with fascination as he ate more of the mighty ash-tree leaves. The spring of water beside Yggdrasil started to bubble and froth, and the great tree began to bloom with alien buds.

  Suddenly Yue Tiansiang lurched forward and collapsed to his knees. Dodge smiled grimly - this was it. The tall Chinese villain coughed and groaned in pain as the leaves began their work.

  “How do you feel now Tiansiang?” Dodge called conversationally.

  “I feel ... I feel ... I feel better!” Tiansiang looked up at Dodge, wearing the face of a fifty-year-old. His hair began grew thicker and regained its colour. Tiansiang looked at his hands as the skin began to tighten and smooth over.

  Dodge gazed at the transformation in amazement. This was not what he had expected!

  Yue Tiansiang straightened up without any assistance. He touched the skin on his face - it was also becoming softer and less lined. The wrinkles around his eyes started to fade and disappear altogether. Then his spine crackled and popped as it began to strengthen itself and he became noticeably taller.

  “Now what do you say, Danger?” Tiansiang purred in a strong, mellow voice. He now looked twenty-five.

  The rejuvenation had stopped and Tiansiang laughed.

  “Kill them, kill them both!” Tiansiang ordered his men.

  Any doubt the soldiers might have had about their master’s power over life and death disappeared. They moved as one. Dodge watched the guards lift their guns at both he and Susan. He grasped her hand and held it tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  She looked up at him with clear blue eyes and smiled reassuringly.

  Suddenly one of the men began to scream. Dodge realised that his fingers had seemingly turned to wood, melding with the stock of his rifle.

  “Master ... please-” He gaped at Yue Tiansiang in horror, then screamed in agony. But scarcely had the noise left his mouth when a mass of green tendrils burst forth and started wrapping around his body.

  Tiansiang could only watch as the rest of his soldiers started suffering from the same phenomenon, vegetation of all kinds bursting from their every orifice and consuming them.

  Dodge backed off as one man rushed towards him, fungal growths puffing from his face. His legs were becoming hard and knotted, his toes turning into roots and trying to dig into the ground. The man fell and his entire head exploded in a puff of spores.

  Yue Tiansiang stared as his men slowly became one with the earth.

  Dodge saw two men wrapped together like Siamese twins, caught in each-others’ flesh and vegetation. They struggled feebly as more tendrils shot from their mouths and eyes, seeking the ground to pull them down.

  “Susan! Onto that ledge!” Dodge barked, pointing out a distant slab of stone. They both ran from the carnage, dodging around the pitiful piles of struggling foliage that littered the cavern floor.

  The screams died as the men’s torment altered into something new. None of these thugs were actually dying. They were being given the gift of true immortality.

  Dodge and Susan clambered onto the ledge and looked across the cavern floor to Yue Tiansiang. The ground before him was now lush with vegetation and life.

  Tiansiang pointed at Dodge. He opened his mouth to scream in fury, but a sibilant hiss emerged instead. Even from this distance Dodge could see that Tiansiang’s eyes were changing. They had widened and shifted position to the sides of his face. Tiansiang looked terrified. His pointing arm began to shrivel and wither, as did his other limb, until they became mere st
umps at his shoulders. Above the villain, the last hue-like remnants of Davidson and Maplethorpe – the Mage and the Rune-Weaver - were coming to their final act in this mess.

  “What’s happening Dodge?” Susan exclaimed.

  “I don’t know, honey!”

  Tiansiang’s skin began to take on a scaly appearance. As the dead wizards’ spirits merged with Yue, a green hue crept up his neck and over his cheeks. Dodge realized what was happening.

  Yue Tiansiang was changing into something!

  Yue Tiansiang was changing into a snake!

  He shuddered with revulsion at the thought. The villain’s clothes split as his body elongated into a knot of muscle. His arms had completely disappeared and his neck thickened to the width of his shoulders. Still it wore Tiansiang’s face.

  The tree was changing him.

  “Dangersssssss!” Tiansiang managed a garbled plea for help and then, finally, his face began to change shape. His mouth stretched and his jaw flattened. Dodge watched as his legs became one and started to extend to an impossible length. The Yue Tiansiang snake grew longer and longer. As it expanded it began to coil around the base of the tree. The Tiansiang serpent lunged towards Dodge and Susan with its heavily fanged jaws wide open, but Yggdrasil had already begun to wrap its roots around its body, trapping it. Soon both beings were locked in an eternal embrace.

  Serpent and tree.

  Yggdrasil and Nidhoggr!

  “Oh my God Dodge!” Susan gasped at the scene before them. The snake snapped at the tree’s roots. But there would be no escape.

  Yue Tiansiang had found his immortality!

  “What the Hell...” Dodge began, but his words were lost as he and Susan found themselves gathered up in a kaleidoscope of colours.

  They were being expelled from the underworlds.

  Dodge grabbed onto Susan’s hands, but the force of the Rainbow Bridge wrenched them apart.

  Colour gave way to cold darkness.

  Twice looked into the ruins of the mineshaft, wondering if it was over.

  “I have a feeling that it is, old man,” whispered the ghostly voice of Lawrence Maplethorpe III. “Don’t grieve too much. We helped save the world! Now go into town and have some breakfast.”

  As Twice headed back towards the village he noticed that far below, across the bay around Rockworth, the sun had begun to rise over the sea. He would miss his magical friend.

  But a new day was dawning. The world had survived Ragnarok.

  Dodge snapped his eyes open and found himself nestled comfortably in the branches of the enormous ash tree.

  “Well done, big guy!” a small voice said to him. Dodge noticed the squirrel sitting next to him, and was in no way surprised to see it.

  Far below Tiansiang/Nidhoggr thrashed around trying to chew through roots thicker than it was.

  “What happened here?” Dodge asked the squirrel.

  It shrugged.

  “The same thing that always happens. The battle was fought and won.”

  “What battle?”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake! The eternal battle between good and evil, light and dark, squirrels and weasels!”

  “What?” Dodge gasped at his companion.

  “Okay, I made the last one up, but the principle stands. Good and evil will always battle each other.”

  “So, we won then?”

  “No, look at the size of that snake down there! The point of the battle is that neither can win. If any one side is triumphant, then the balance is lost and the world would surely die,” the squirrel declared as it scampered up onto Dodge’s shoulder.

  “So, what about Ragnarok?” Dodge asked it.

  “It’s over, but it has still to begin,” the squirrel replied enigmatically. “The end is the beginning is the end! This cavern and all of us little critters are without time. We don’t travel the same planes as you do, buckaroo!”

  “What?” Dodge cried as the squirrel scampered down onto his knees to quiver its whiskers up at him.

  “The cavern doesn’t lie in normal space. It doesn’t really exist physically, but it’s very real and important. You’ve saved things and maintained the natural balance. As you have before and will again. Yggdrasil thanks you, Dodge Danger!” The squirrel turned and scampered off into the shadowy depths of the lush green foliage.

  “Any time,” Dodge muttered.

  He snapped his eyes open and stared up at the starlight sky. A husky leaned forward and started licking his face with enthusiasm.

  “Easy boy!” Dodge pushed the dog away from him, gently as his entire body was still aching. Looking around he saw Susan sprawled in the snow. As though on cue she started to stir.

  “Oh, I think I’m going to be sick!” she muttered and then, as if stung, she said “Dodge?”

  “It’s okay sweetheart, I’m here!” Laboriously he climbed to his feet and helped her up. They looked together at the horizon.

  The Rainbow Bridge was gone.

  Dodge slipped his arm around her shoulders and held her close to him.

  Both disappeared into the moment, into their thoughts.

  But at least both were alive!

  Epilogue I

  Beijing, 1939

  The man sat in his chair regarding Reptilia curiously. He had just spent the past three years in a mob war against the 12 foot woman Giganta, her real name Cynthia Brown. Cynthia and her partner Niana Trevski – also known as the assassin Scourge – had finally fled China for Taiwan.

  However this Reptilia woman was an enigma. The daughter of one of China’s most feared crimelords, she had disappeared with her father one year earlier. Both had been written off as dead. But now she was back.

  “What do you think you can do for me?” Chairman Mao Zedong asked.

  “There are a number of artefacts that were spirited away by Giganta’s forces. I can help you retrieve them. I can also pass onto you much of my late father’s wealth and property. I can do much for you, Chairman Mao, but I want one thing in return.”

  Mao Zedong was not naive; he blanched at the prospects of collaborating with this awful woman. However, he also saw the inherent benefits. Yue Tiansiang had been fabulously wealthy.

  “What is this favour?” he asked.

  “When the time comes, I want assistance in the destruction of a capitalist lackey Dodge Danger!” Reptilia’s eyes burned with hatred and Mao Zedong saw a passion that he could use in many ways.

  “Please Reptilia, have a seat. We shall discuss this matter over tea.”

  Epilogue II

  The Alaskan/Canadian border, 1939

  Deep within a disused mine shaft thirteen miles from where Davidson had been killed lay the second site. In a shrine, bound by ancient magic, a small black idol sat within a ring of runestones, waiting patiently for someone to discover it.

  Patiently… silently… eternally.

  The End