We left our intrepid hero as he was about the enter the Caverns of Terror, at the far reaches of the Forsaken Land, the plucky Bobby by his side as always. Tesla searches desperately for an antidote to the poison which will soon claim the life of the lovely Suzanne, who faithfully awaits his return at Wardenclyffe Tower. Having crossed the Scorched Earth and battled the terrifying Rad-Men, he now finds himself about to enter the network of tunnels which lead far beneath the legendary Ground Zero, and to the Spring of Healing told of in the myths of the native Indians. What terrors await him here? Will he find the antidote and return home in time to save Suzanne? Read on!

Tesla hoisted his magnifying transmitter rod in his hands, comforted as ever by the weight of his trusty weapon. Once again he checked his power supply, reaching around behind him to confirm that all the cord running from the rod to the resonant transformers strapped to his back were still in place. His fantastic arsenal hung from his powerful form; his pistols sat ready at his hips, his Leyden grenades hung ready from his belt and his goggles, with all their many settings and uses, ready on his forehead. He braced himself, gave Bobby a reassuring smile, and stepped through the cave mouth into the darkness beyond.

"Gee Tesla, this place really gives me the willies!" said Bobby, his high pitched voice echoing off the walls. "Are you sure that we need to go through here?"

"I'm afraid so, Bobby. I don't like it any more than you do, but if we want to get to the Spring of Healing in time we've no choice but to pass through here. The old man back at the village said so, and I've seen no reason to doubt him yet. He was right about the Katchi flower calming down Giant Scorpions, and I'm sure that he'll be right about this as well."

Bobby smiled up at him, blue eyes wide and trusting, and Tesla reached down and ruffled his young assistant's hair.

"All right then Bobby. Got your gear ready? Then let's go!"

And with that they began their terrifying descent into darkness, though they knew not what horrors might await them inside. The walls loomed imposingly on either side, the tunnel twisting and turning yet always moving downwards. Soon they arrived at a branch in the path and were forced to make a choice. They picked at random, then again and again, till soon they felt sure that they could never find their way back to the place where they had entered.

It was not long before they both began to hear a strange scraping noise coming from further along. Tesla motioned Bobby to silence and, with an understanding for one another's movements borne from long years of adventuring together, they began to move carefully and without speaking. They sought to identify the source of the terrible noise from ahead, a combination of metallic scrapings and inhuman gurgling, but were fearful of alerting whatever dwelled beyond to their presence.

The room ahead was an enormous cave. Stepping through the entrance, the plucky pair found themselves looking down into a huge pit, its sides gently sloped and its bottom writhing with living forms. Tesla caught his breath and Bobby squealed and hid his face, burrowing against the science-hero's comforting form. Below them were hundreds of creatures, grotesque combinations of living flesh and machinery, mechanical limbs twitching and fluttering against one another, eyes and mouths gaping wide, thick wormlike bodies twisting over one another.

Tesla put his hand on Bobby's shoulder and began to scan the room with his eyes, searching desperately for any sort of escape. A door stood invitingly on the other side of the pit, but they would have to go through the beasts to get to it.

"Blast," he muttered, "looks like the only way out of here is through those things, and I don't think that they're likely to give us a very warm welcome."

There was a terrible scream from the pit, and then silence. They had been spotted! One of the hideous creatures had reared up so that its ridged belly was exposed, pink and glistening, thousands of rusted limbs running down either side. The creatures had identified them as intruders, and their tiny brains knew only one response to intruders. The nest surged forward as one, a single heaving mass of flesh, jaws wide and hungry.

Tesla stood his ground, eyes narrowed, and began to fire. The resonant transformers on his back began to hum and whir, and his magnifying transmitter rod began to discharge its electrical might into the onrushing horde. One monster fell and then another, but it was clear that they would soon be overwhelmed. Tesla released the mighty weapon and allowed it to swing at his side – this situation called not for the precision shots which it delivered, but for speed. There was only one weapon in his formidable arsenal that could protect them now: his mighty pistols, the pistols that he had built himself using the fantastical science of harmonic oscillation, the pistols with which he had carved his legend across the Forsaken Land. The pistols that would save their lives today, as they had so many times before.

His weapons blazed in his hands, blazing arcs of electrical energy lancing out into his waiting foes, the power of the gods harnessed by man and channeled into destructive might. Creatures wilted before its steely gaze, their bellies burst open, their limbs corroded, their bodies burst aflame and torn asunder. Still they came, hordes of them, wave after wave meeting their destruction beneath his crackling weapons. He never wavered, never hesitated when adjusting his aim, never failed to land his shots exactly where he wanted them. When the panting hero finally took his fingers from the triggers there was nothing moving in the pit beneath, save for the slow toppling of the last few corpses to their resting place, no sound but Bobby's soft whimpers and the slow whir of the resonant transformers winding down.

While Bobby stayed whimpering against the wall, Tesla descended bravely into the pit, a mighty pistol ready in either hand. The stench of the creatures revolted him, but he had to know what form of creature it was that he had battled here today. Sifting through the detritus that littered the floor, unmindful of the slime that soon coated his boots, he began to examine the mechanical components of the beasts that he had vanquished. There was something familiar here, something that he knew that he had seen before, in another form and another place. A certain design, a certain evil which he had thought extinguished from this world forever.

And then a well dressed and sneering man stepped into the room from the opposite door, and all his doubts were dispelled. Tesla gasped as his eyes alighted upon him.

"It can't possibly be…" he gasped.

But it was! The man who now faced them, creator of the foul beasts so freshly exterminated, was Tesla's childhood friend and lifelong rival, the man with whom he had worked and studied until their paths were forced to separate, one choosing the life of a hero and the other an existence of pure villainy. The man who he had thought dead since their fateful encounter on the rim of a volcano so many years ago. The man who carried the only pair of pistols in the world which were a match for his own. His eyes narrowed, and he spoke the hated name aloud.

"Edison."

"So we meet again, Nikola Tesla. This meeting, I suspect, will be our last."

And with that the evil scientist gave a wicked laugh, and the ground began to rumble as enormous mechanical monsters lumbered into the cavern from both directions.

Whatever will become of our heroes? Can this really be the end, brought down by their archnemesis in the bowels of the earth, while Suzanne wastes away at Wardenclyffe Tower? Look for the next issue for answers to all your questions, on sale from newsstands next month!

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