The Demon’s Cantos
Part 16
The pull grabbed on from behind this time, shattering Byron’s strange fugue state and tugging his guts against the skin of his back as he passed once again through an indescribable glow. Byron was aware of both Korbius’s astounded eye in the void beside him, as well as the light touch of a spider’s talon on his abdomen.
Together they all passed through the bizarre noplace, and it felt to Byron, fleetingly, as if he and Korbius, and the disembodied spider leg, were literally one and the same thing – as if they were a contiguous unit, travelling together, beyond space and time.
Then the glow disappeared, the sense of indescribable unity collapsed, and all hell broke loose.
An ear splitting hiss pierced the air as Byron and Korbius came flying out of the open door. They managed to catch Faustus up in their mess, and the three landed in a rolling jumble on the sand. It was night time on the beach and a large bonfire crackled half way between the house and the open door. Byron and the two monsters came to a stop ten feet or so from the fire, Byron barely aware of where he was, Korbius eager to defend against Faustus, and Faustus loosing a shrill scream.
“Faustus!”
Tilda came running toward them, tripping in the sand. But before she could arrive, Faustus writhed his way out of the tangle of bodies and scampered off with a strange, uneven gait into the undergrowth of the island’s forest. Tilda turned and tried to run after him, yelling the spider’s name, but she could not keep up. She stopped, helpless, twenty feet or so before the forest line as Faustus disappeared into the night.
Byron lay on his back, Korbius defaulting to a defensive posture, nearly on top of him. There was something warm on Byron’s face. Confused, he brought his hand up to feel it and his fingers came away wet. Holding his hand up over his head, in the orange glow of the fire, the strange hot liquid appeared to be almost pure black. Byron cringed at the idea of being covered in the stuff, whatever it was, and instinctively reached down to the sand in order to wipe it off. As he rubbed his hand in the sand, his palm came in contact with something strange – a hard, textured cylinder of some kind. Byron closed his grip around it and raised it up.
One of Faustus’s long, front facing black skinned legs, covered in small hairs, darkly reflected the light of the fire – a talon on one end, and on the other a perfectly clean cut, oozing black blood.
Byron yelled in surprise and flung the spider leg away from him. He stood up hastily and swiped at his whole body, indulging the irrational notion that, by holding a giant spider’s leg he had somehow become covered in hundreds of tiny spiders. His skin itched fiercely, and in the chaos of the moment he forgot entirely to do his relaxation motions and tore off his shirt, using it as kind of miniature whip to strike the sensation of tiny crawling legs from his bare back.
Korbius turned momentarily away from Tilda to see what the bustle behind him was about and stared at Byron in bewilderment for almost a minute before commenting.
Does Master Byron require assistance?
Korbius raised two of his giant tentacles and slathered them on Byron’s bare skin, covering him in cold ooze. This had the benefit of eliminating the sensation of crawling spiders but led to its own neurotic complications. Byron covered his face with his hands, feeling that he was about to have a meltdown of rare severity. He forced himself to run his fingers against each other in two full cycles, and then over-calmly walked toward the water.
Master Byron?
Byron swiftly raised a hand as he walked, not looking back. “Just, stay,” Byron said, commanding the octopus as if he were a large dog. With slow, measured steps Byron walked toward the coursing sea and the promise of cleanliness. He slammed the big, floating purple door shut as he passed it and continued on into the warm surf.
Tilda still hadn’t turned to greet them. Instead, she remained standing at the forest’s edge, facing the spot where Faustus had disappeared. It was too dark for them to see the dismal rise and fall of her shoulders in the firelight.
Ten minutes later Byron walked back through the warm night air, wet sand sticking to the sides of his bare feet. His pants were wet with salt water, but despite their clinging to his skin, he felt infinitely better having cleansed himself of both spider blood and cephalopodic slime.
As he approached the bonfire, Byron saw the silhouetted profile of a giant octopus and a small form sitting in the sand, one facing the other, both half flickering in the firelight. Korbius turned toward Byron, twisting in place and reaching out with his mind. Byron was at least thirty feet away and he found himself wondering what the limit of Korbius’s psychic ability was.
Master Byron, the small one has not said anything and the spider has not returned.
Then Korbius added, a little hesitantly and without any real conviction:
Say the word and Korbius shall crush this one —
Byron looked down at his feet as he walked and saw that the blue stain on his stomach was glowing brightly as Korbius spoke. Byron just shook his head and Korbius seemed to understand the gesture as a psychic “no”. The blue glow faded into the dark and in a few more seconds Byron was standing in front of the crackling flames, happy for the extra warmth.
Byron took an uncomfortable seat, bearing through the sensation of wet sand on the inside of his pants. Then the three of them just sat there for a long time, watching the fire, saying nothing. Tilda was uncharacteristically somber, and when Byron looked over, he saw that she held the dismembered spider leg delicately in her lap.
Byron cleared his throat, “I’m sorry about Faustus.”
Tilda said nothing and did not shift her gaze.
Byron looked around, “it’s, um, night time, now.”
Tilda’s sad eyes flitted down a little more, toward the base of the fire.
Byron persisted. “It was daytime when we left —” Byron could not honestly remember, although technically it had only been a couple of minutes since he first touched the portal behind the door. “Wasn’t it?”
Tilda didn’t look up at him. She didn’t move at all. “It was daytime.”
Byron nodded judiciously and peered over to Korbius. Korbius blinked in confusion.
Korbius does not even know where he is – is this . . . bathroom?
Without answering, Byron slowly looked back at Tilda. “How long was I gone?”
Tilda gave it a few moments of silent consideration. “About seven days,” she said, deadpan.
Byron’s eyes flicked wide open and he leaned toward her. “Seven days?” The enormity of the time period struck him like an electric shock. “Seven days?! That isn’t —”
It is not possible, Master Cantor. Less than five minutes ago Master Byron was in backyard, under attack.
Tilda sighed, “time passes more quickly here,” she said. Then Tilda leaned her head back and looked at the night sky. “Ten thousand times faster. Every second out there is ten thousand seconds in here.” Her gaze fell onto Byron and for the first time since they met, Byron withered beneath the intensity of her eyes. He turned his head toward the fire as she spoke. “It takes about a minute, in real time, for the portal to recharge after every use. About seven days in here.”
Byron’s hand rose to his mouth in an instinctive expression of amazement. “What is this place?”
Tilda looked back at the fire, one hand resting affectionately on the middle joint of Faustus’s leg. “It’s like a miniature universe, with its own rules. The portal,” she made a weak gesture toward the floating door with her head, “is designed to protect people who pass through. Just a little touch,” she slowly reached out a finger in mid-air, “and it drags every part of you through at once.”
Byron thought back to the first time he passed through, how just the tip of his finger had touched the sheen of energy, causing the rest of him to plummet forward. “How did Faustus bring us both back?”
Tilda frowned, “the portal errs on the side of caution with living things – you and Korbius —” she paused, eyes fixed on the macabre object in her lap, “— and Faustus – you were all touching, so it brought you all back together.”
“But,” Byron remembered how the portal had dragged him forward with such force, “how did Faustus reach out and touch us without getting pulled all the way through?”
Tilda looked up at him. “You can resist it, if you’re patient enough,” she said, ” strong enough. But not without cost.”
It took Byron just a moment to see why the portal worked as it did. If time really moved ten thousand times slower on the other side of the portal, then someone attempting to pass through without being taken all at once would have some parts of their body working much faster on one side of the portal than on the other.
Byron considered how many hours it would have taken to slowly extend his arm through the portal, knowing full well that success meant having it treated as a separate biological entity and torn from the rest of his body. He imagined the sensation of encroaching numbness as his hand passed into real-time and froze, millimeter by intolerable millimeter, all while fighting that irresistible forward pull.
Byron shuddered and looked with both new darkness and greater sympathy at Faustus’s severed leg.
“Will he be alright?” Byron asked.
Tilda made eye contact with Byron and for a moment it looked as though she were going to burst into tears. For the first time since they’d met, she seemed like a lost child. It filled Byron with both empathy and worry – was this really the Preceptor?.
“I don’t know,” Tilda replied, looking down the sad, flaccid limb, “he’s lost a lot of blood.”
Just then one of Korbius’s stretched out tentacles rose consolingly onto Tilda’s right shoulder. Tilda looked up toward Korbius across the fire, appeared to listen to something Byron could not hear, and then gave the octopus a weak but grateful smile. “I hope so.” She said.
Byron looked puzzled for a moment, then turned toward Korbius, and back to Tilda. “You can hear him?”
“I heard a voice,” Tilda said, wiping a stray tear from her eye, “I assumed it was him.”
The Lord of the Octopodiae looked at Byron abashedly, slowly retracting his tentacle around the fire, dragging it through the sand.
Korbius simply expressed his opinion to tiny human – the spider is a formidable foe – Korbius doubts the loss of a single tentacle will be fatal, for one so strong.
Byron couldn’t help but smile. “That’s the first time you’ve spoken to anyone other than me,” Byron said, “I guess you have a soft spot in there somewhere.”
Korbius blinked in confusion.
Korbius is universally soft, as are all octopodiae, except for the sharp talons of our fell beaks!
Byron’s smile broadened, and Tilda even chuckled a little. “Right,” he said sarcastically, “my mistake.”
A strange one, Master Byron, as Korbius is quite soft, as you well know.
Byron nodded appeasingly, “You’re right Korbius, I’m still a bit light-headed.” The terrible vision in Tilda’s backyard came back to mind – the shadow walking calmly toward him, dissolving homes and people as it approached, the all-consuming inferno.
“Tilda, I saw something out there.”
Tilda nodded slowly, “The Unmaker,” she said, so quietly her voice could barely be heard over the crackling fire.
“Those faces are his servants, his harbingers. That whole storm was unnatural.” She looked up at Byron, worried, “you could feel that from the start, couldn’t you?”
Byron took a deep breath and released it. “He’s coming. Hell, he’s already on the island,” Byron said, pointing toward the purple door, “right through that door.”
Tilda froze, her face a mask of uncertainty.
But Byron continued, desperate to share the burden of the vision with someone, anyone else. “He’s overwhelming, Tilda, even just the sight of him, the shadow and the fire —” Byron had to shake his head to break from spiraling back into the dark reverie that had consumed him before. His eyes filled with abject worry and took on an unfixed stare, straight ahead, the bonfire reflecting darkly in them
“I’m just a kid. How am I supposed to fight that?”
Tilda bit her lower lip and even as Byron watched, right before his eyes, a firm resolve coalesced over her features, as if she had come to some unwavering personal conclusion, banishing all uncertainty. She sat up straighter, set her jaw, and stared into the hot center of the flames.
“I’ll teach you.”
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