The immortal Zauber and his fleeing creator, Dr. Janet Tolstoy

In the air above the tower, the clouds split apart and a rough atmospheric entry deposited a burning shuttle-craft onto the surface of the road leading in; the way it skid to a stop and tilted over, instead of activating any landing gear or slowing speed, made it clear that this was not a pleasure trip. A loud, monotone alarm blared from inside the ship, as if announcing the arrival of the newest challenger to the Tower of Total Defeat. Seeming less a challenger, more the survivor of a grisly car crash, a woman pulled herself from the wreckage. Her own blood stained her otherwise pretty, pale face and stark white lab-coat, beneath which she wore a fetching gray turtle-neck. Remarking upon the rest of her beauty in this state would be crass; she was clearly injured from the entry.

Amazingly, the woman spoke in an even voice, despite her gruesome physical condition. She replaced her glasses upon her face, ran her hand through her long, messy blond hair, then frowned as she saw her fingers come away from her scalp covered in blood. "This is Doctor Janet Tolstoy, beginning Survival Log. I've landed on a primitive planet I believe to hold a tower, steeped in ancient superstition. Inside that tower: one Reality Crystal, an item which... as a scientist, I'm loathe to say... could be my only shot at saving the entire universe from the dominance of Zauber. I have described Zauber at length in previous logs... I won't speak of him again. At this point, I have no other option but to find the crystal and use it to destroy my past experiment... I'll rectify my past sins."

No one was around to hear the words she spoke... in fact, she wasn't certain if any of humanity had survived her planet's destruction at the hands of Zauber. For all she knew, she was the last human in existence. The words of her Survival Log instead went into the ear-mounted microphone she wore, to be recorded for posterity, if any civilization survived to see the world past her current adventure.

The woman grabbed an over-sized medical bag, black with an emblem on the front. The emblem was a reaching hand, with the words "TOLSTOY SCIENCES" printed over it in bold, white letters. The doctor opened it up... Inside, she confirmed the presence of a small hand-gun, along with a variety of spray cans, beakers, and injection needles, marked with names only she would recognize. Dr. Tolstoy pulled one of the sprays from inside and began to twist the cap open with her one working hand. The contents of the spray, one of her finest inventions at Tolstoy Sciences before her own corporation had doomed the human race, was composed of a potent mixture of green and red herbs, the kinds of mysterious natural resources that ordinary folks would never know the use of. The doctor had once used these to cure countless afflictions and revolutionize medical science... Now, she sprayed herself over with the substance, to preserve her feebly protected life for just a bit longer.

Her whole bag was filled with these unusual tokens of her own scientific genius... scientific genius which was of no use against the opponent close behind her. "I don't deserve to live... but I must. If humanity is to have any chance at coming back from this, I must survive. I must..."

The green mist emitted from the can had seemingly closed up her wounds by way of magic... a moment later, she felt her broken bones healed. She managed to flex her fingers, but could offer no smile of satisfaction... The woman's dour mood couldn't leave her. Not until she'd ended the horror that was Zauber.

Still, other than the bloody labcoat and the grim frown, she was quite a looker. She had been the face of Tolstoy Sciences as well as the chief mind behind its developments, which had taken humanity into a sort of utopia before dragging them all into hell. Her shapely body- young, too, given she was a scientific wonderkin, having accomplished so much by the age of 28- filled her sweater attractively. While she favored slim slacks rather than mini-skirts, the pants didn't do much to hide the pleasant, slender shape of her legs. Where she'd once preferred to wear high-heels, she now wore black boots. Her pretty hands were covered in purple, well-worn latex lab-gloves. Overall, she'd prefer to be cleaned up and wearing some sort of breathing apparatus, but time to prepare was at a premium... She'd have to brave this strange planet and its dangers in order to complete her mission of redemption.

The grave-faced woman carried only her bag from the wreckage of her personal shuttle. Her blond hair swept around herself in a, frankly, cool and pleasant breeze as she fixed her oval-rimmed glasses upon her face and approached the ominous tower; it looked like something out of a fantasy story. Obviously, the place had been inhabited, at least at some point, but she couldn't expect for the aliens here to understand human courtesies, if they even still lived. The doctor didn't have time to spare for them either. Instead of knocking, she brutally kicked the door in. Doctor Tolstoy wouldn't raise her voice to announce herself... she'd simply drag her bag inside, then begin her search.

If someone was still living here, did they deserve to be warned of Zauber's coming? Quite possibly... She didn't think she could spend the time, but if someone did appear, she'd be obligated by common decency to warn them what they needed to know: that Zauber was coming and that destroying him was completely impossible. If they proved hostile, she would instead be compelled to neutralize them, by **** if necessary. The doctor imagined that the tools in her bag would be sufficient for that purpose, if it came down to it...

"My creator... Run, if you must... No matter... Destroyed... Dust, like all the rest..."

Zauber's voice reached no living creature as the creature and his army of the undead floated through the void of space, utilizing the great Tolstoy Sciences interplanetary shuttle that the doctor herself had been preparing in order to take a team of the finest scientists into space. They'd been planning to escape from earth and start a new life on a planet somewhere...

Now, they hung behind him, drooping their shoulders and frowning with gaping, dead mouths. They had become part of his zombie army. He'd absorbed their intellect, including all of the necessary knowledge to operate and repair this craft. Making his way to their plan B- a small planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth's and a strange structure, called the Tower of Total Defeat- had been simple enough.

The corpses all over the ship had turned it from a pristine monument to humanity's scientific strides into a macabre tomb, a gross shrine to humanity's hubris. Doctor Janet Tolstoy had created Zauber in an effort to approach mankind's dreams... true immortality. An undying human. She'd achieved that lofty goal, but she never could have imagined the identity the creature would assume: the natural ruler of humanity. It felt no empathy for the ones who'd created it. Instead, he saw them all as something like food or resources: beings of inconsequential intelligence that were better suited to feed his massive hive mind of resurrected zombies, the personalities and minds of which all fed directly into his own ego and being.

The true body of Zauber was essentially lost. For now, he existed as the head of one of the former scientists, a black-haired Japanese man, grotesquely grafted onto the much more muscular, nude body of a black-skinned male. Among the tongue-lolling zombies, this was the only one wearing a composed expression... that was because it was the only one granted the gift of Zauber's collected intelligence. However, if this body could, miraculously, be destroyed, he could easily hop into the preserved bodies of any of humanity's dregs that he'd collected, not just here on the ship, but even back on the home-world of Earth. His mental transfer had no limits. He had achieved true immortality.

Only one thing eluded him: the mind of his creator. The genius with the intellect necessary to bring him into creation, Doctor Tolstoy, had evaded his clutches using that same cunning. His journey wouldn't reach its end until he assimilated her.

"On this planet... Reality Crystal... No difference... No one can protect you... No one left... Do not resist, Mother... Join your kind... Become Zauber..."

The creature had some passing interest in the Reality Crystal, but not too much. He'd seen his mother become sloppy in recent days as he deprived her of all resources, absorbing her coworkers, friends, and family while bringing to ruin the entirety of earth and all of its useless structures and technology. All of it could be turned against them and had been. Janet's final move was one of desperation. She didn't believe in that crystal any more than he did... she was just grasping at straws. In his pitiless eyes, he saw her weak hand was reaching for hope like the emblem that adorned her inventions.

"Your grave... The end of humanity... Reborn as Zauber..."

The zombies moaned in chorus as the ship descended to land close nearby the flaming wreckage of her shuttle. It was time for the immortal entity, Zauber, to finish absorbing all of human kind into his collective.