Legends of Shazam's Power #3

[spiritofvengeance]

Legends of Shazam’s Power #3
An Evil Awakens

By Mike Bowen
Edited By: Daniel Dyer

Theo Adams fell quickly to a stone floor, his face slapping the cold hard rocks with enough impact that should have shattered his jaw. Instead he barely felt it. In fact he felt very weird, almost like he was in someone else’s body. He started to get up, but struggled. He couldn’t get his legs to work properly. It was like he was learning to walk again.

“Wh... what¹s going on?” a deep baritone voice echoed in his head. “Who are you?”

Adams shook his head, trying to clear out the words. That is when he caught the first glimpse of himself since he appeared in this dark room. He had completely changed. Instead of the spindly two-bit con man that he was when he took hold of the amulet in his apartment, he was now tall, broad and clad in a jet-black suit with a giant golden lightning bolt on his chest.

“I knew this time would come,” a woman’s voice rang out from the inky darkness that surrounded him. “It has been a long time Adam.”

“You will refer to me as Champion, Wizard,” he responded in the deep baritone voice. “Show yourself! there is no use hiding.”

Again Adams shook his head. Where did those words and that voice come from. It sure wasn’t his. Then he recalled the voice that spoke in his head when he first came to. It was the same.
With that Theo Adams “blacked out” and would remember nothing of what happened when he became Black Adam.

Suddenly torches flared up around Adam lighting up the entire inner sanctum of the Rock of Eternity. Standing at the far end, surrounded by statues and other trinkets was the Wizard Shazam. She was clad in her traditional robe with the hood pulled neatly over her dark hair, shadowing her face.

“Do not treat me as someone that you have power over Adam,” she calmly stated. “Remember, it was I, Shazam, who gave you your powers in the first place.”

“That was then, this is now Wizard,” Adam spat, refusing to address her by her name because it would trigger the transformation. “And if I recall it was you who imprisoned me in the first place. I have waited a millennia to be free and you will not stand in my way!”

“DO NOT THREATEN ME,” Shazam’s voice made the walls of the Rock of Eternity tremble as she threw back her hood. Her eyes sparkled with a terrible fire. “You have much to learn, wayward champion. I could strip you of your power again if I choose. Now stand down before I have to force you into submission.”

A menacing smile crept onto Black Adam’s face. He tucked his chin to his chest and started to kneel before the wizard. But as soon as Shazam averted her eyes he leapt into action. With a streak of black and gold, Adam connected with a devastating punch, knocking Shazam to the ground.
With the sound of stone breaking echoing throughout the chamber, Adam stood over the fallen Wizard, a giant piece of the rock’s ceiling in his hands, ready to be brought down upon Shazam’s face.

“And now the endgame Wizard,” Adam gloated. “Give my regards to the gods,” he said as he brought the chuck of rock down on her head.

“Not to worry, the new champion has already been warn....”
Shazam got out before the rock smashed into her skull.

A panicked look crossed Adam’s face. “New Champion? What? You didn’t say anything about a new Champion!” Adam wailed.

But it was too late, the last breath escaped the corpse of the Wizard Shazam as blood started to pool around the edges of the boulder.
Black Adam took one last look at the body before slowly turning towards the darkened portion of the cavern and flew off out of sight.

****

[spiritofvengeance]

It didn’t take Captain Marvel long to catch up the high speed chase through the streets of Fawcett City. In fact, it took longer for the police officers following the car to extract the criminals (who had robbed a bank earlier) from the car once Marvel stepped in front of it.
Marvel dropped out of the sky, directly in front of the car, which looked like it collided with a telephone pole.
As the scene was being cleaned up Marvel was being held at gunpoint by one of the officers, who wasn’t sure what to make of the hero.
“It’s O.K. Officer,” Marvel said, trying to coax the officer to lower his gun. “My name is Captain Marvel, and I am here to help.”

“Marvel? Never heard of ya,” the officer responded.

“Please, Officer ...” Marvel leaned forward to examine the nameplate on the cop’s uniform. “Poe. I am new to Fawcett City, but we are on the same side. I am here to help you,” as he extended his hand. “Besides, that gun isn’t going to do you much good anyways,” Marvel said with a laugh.

The cop nervously lowered his weapon, but didn’t take Marvel up on the handshake offer. It was really a lot for officer Bill Poe to take in. He was trailing a trio of bank robbers on a high speed chase through the city, when all of the sudden this man dropped out of nowhere and nearly split the car in two. Not only did it not kill him, but it didn’t even muss up his perfect hair or his little white cape. There has never been any superheroes in Fawcett City before, but he has heard stories of others popping up across the country.

“So you’re like one of those superguys?” Poe tentatively asked.

“Exactly,” Marvel replied with a wide grin. “I am here to help, anytime needed.”

Just then the hair on the back of Captain Marvel’s neck started to stand up.
Before he could warn Officer Poe to get away, he found himself in dark, mist-covered room with the Lady Shazam standing before him. But something was odd about her, she looked almost transparent.

“Listen closely my champion as I do not have much time,” she said, almost in a whisper. “The rouge champion has returned by unknown means. You must stop him. Black Adam must be stopped! It is up to you my championnnnnnnnnnnn.”

With that she faded away and Marvel was back on the street in front of Poe, just where he had been moments ago.

“Are you O.K. son?” Poe asked quizzically, not even mentioning Marvel’s disappearance.

“Fine, just fine, Officer,” Marvel said, his wide smile returning to his face. “But for now, I must be off, there is something that needs my immediate attention.”

****

[spiritofvengeance]

Marvel easily found the Rock of Eternity, which was strange, because he had never went on his own, just when being summoned by the Wizard Shazam. But it was like their was a radar inside his head, pointing him in the direction of the Rock.
It took him a few minutes of hovering beside it before he shook off the amazement of his first sight of it. Until this time, Marvel had only been in the Rock, never glimpsing the outside of it. He had always imagined it as some sort of cave or underground temple, not the floating diamond-shaped mountain he found several miles in the sky.
He wasn’t even sure what city he was over. It was definitely east of Fawcett City, but he had never seen it before. Finally after circling the Rock several times he found what looked to be an entrance and headed for it.

Marvel’s feet touched down silently on the rock floor as he headed down a long passageway towards the center of the Rock and what he hoped was the Wizard’s chamber.
As he made his way down the passageway, the torches along the walls magically lit as he passed. The flickering glow from the red and yellow flames cast an eerie light on what Marvel could now see were massive carved murals, showing several different figures in battle poses. He paused in front of one of the murals depicting a tall, broadchested warrior who wore a lightning bolt on his chest, similar to Captain Marvel’s.

Little did he know that he was reading the history of Teth-Adam, the very champion that the ghostly image of the Wizard Shazam had warned him about earlier. He ran his fingers over it before moving on down the passageway.
After nearly an hour of traveling, Marvel finally burst into the inner chamber of the Rock, where he had been many times before. But instead of the wonder that usually filled him when in the chamber, this time he was struck with horror.

The chamber was strewn with broken artifacts and statues, but that wasn’t the worst part. In the center, Marvel could see the Wizard Shazam’s robe sticking out from under a very large chunk of the chamber’s ceiling. There were also blood stains around the base of the rock, near where the Wizard’s head would be.
He quickly leapt to the rock and heaved it over his head, but what was under it was even more shocking... nothing.
There was only the Wizard’s robe, nothing more. He tossed the rock to one side and collapsed to his knees, lifting the cloak in his arms. He didn’t really know Shazam, but her apparent death brought a tear to his eye. How would he go on, without his guide. He has only had his powers for a short time and was still learning the ropes.

“That’s so touching,” a booming voice echoed out from a dark corner.

Marvel dropped the robe and looked frantically around the chamber, searching out the speaker. Before he could locate the origin of the voice there was a flash as a rock-hard hand connected with his jaw, sending him flying back into a statue, shattering it.

“That actually hurt,” Marvel said amazed, rubbing his jaw.

That is when he saw him, standing in the center of the chamber. The man was the same person that he saw carved in the mural in the passage leading up to the inner chamber. He was clad in a jet-black costume, with gold boots and bracers around his wrists. On his chest was a giant golden lightning bolt, exactly like Marvel’s. The strange thing about this man though, was he was hovering, maybe three or four inches off the ground, almost like he was too good to walk.

“Are you surprised pretender,” the man boomed.

“Who are you, mister, and what are you doing here,” Marvel asked quizzically.

The man’s face turned incredulous.

“You dare ask me who I am?” He casually waved a hand towards the Wizard Shazam’s empty robe and the bloodcovered rock. “I am Teth-Adam! And I will be your destroyer, much like that witch.”

To Be Continued...