The Demon’s Cantos
Part 1
Korbius, Demonlord of the Octopodiae, lay on the black and white linoleum tiles of Byron’s Grandma’s old kitchen, tentacles swinging wildly in the air.
Removed from the blood waters of the Nether Sea, Korbius’s gelatinous flesh sagged heavily towards the ground. Still he flailed his eight tentacles through the air angrily, slapping them wetly against pots and pans, suction cups sticking to whatever they touched and dragging those things about the room.
Byron watched the madness from the corner. He cringed as his grandma’s antique butter cozy smashed into a thousand pieces against the far wall. Korbius’s nearly formless central mass blocked the only doorway out, and Byron, terrified, held his grandmother’s handwritten cookbook in two hands out in front of him, as if it might act as a shield against the otherworldly creature. The ground was slick in Korbius’s crimson slime and one of the tentacles flicked toward Byron, spraying him down in a shower of cold red goop.
You could say being covered in the bodily juices of a Sixth Dimensional Demonlord was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Byron certainly felt that way and decided it was as good a time as any to start screaming.
Be silent, human! Cease your mating call! This is no time for copulation!
Byron recoiled from the deep throated voice that suddenly addressed him from inside his own head. He looked wild-eyed around the destroyed room. “Who is that?! Help! Help me!”
Human, it is I, Korbius, Demonlord of the Octopodiae. Korbius speaks through your crude mind.
Just a couple of hours ago Byron was finishing a painfully normal day of work, frying burgers at the local McDonald’s, and now he was standing in his dead grandmother’s wrecked kitchen being talked down to by a giant octopus. Weighing the equities, screaming again seemed like the obvious choice. Korbius, however, was not having it.
SILENCE!
The word was equal part mental yell as it was unrelenting command and it made Byron go silent, mid-scream, in spite of himself.
Where is Korbius, Demonlord of the Octopodiae?
Byron was hyperventilating. He tried to remember where he’d left his inhaler, but found it hard to focus over the cephalopod’s telepathic interrogation. He sputtered out syllables between quick breaths. “You’re…in…my…kitch…en…”
How has Korbius been summoned to Kitchen?
Byron tried to channel his mindfulness meditation and failed utterly. “I…don’t…know!” His breathing began to slow down. “I…was… I was reading… this book.” Byron held the book up and a tentacle shot out and latched onto its cover, dragging it back toward Korbius through the mess of ooze on the floor. The gelatinous mass of demon octopus shifted on the linoleum, a process that created a series of ridiculous fart-like noises. Byron watched the absurd scene, slack jawed, as Korbius spun his central mass around revealing his beak and a single gargantuan eyeball.
For a moment, Korbius stared at the cover of the book held in his tentacle. Suddenly a high pitched whine emanated from the demon’s beak and he flung the book back towards Byron as if it were a live hand grenade.
Impossible!
Byron looked down at the book as it slid across the slick, tiled floor and spun to a stop at his feet. On the hand written cover it read, in big, warm letters, ‘Gran’s Cookbook.’ It was his Grandma’s hand written cookbook. She’d left it to Byron when she died, only a week earlier, along with a letter insisting that Byron learn her favorite recipes, passed down from generation to generation.
So Byron had decided to give it a try. He had been feeling a little under the weather, and so he chose chicken soup. He broke out the old tome, opened it on the kitchen table and, going down the list of ingredients with his finger, he’d read each one aloud, a habit he’d formed when reading to help compensate for his dyslexia.
No sooner had he finished the final ingredient – ‘a large pinch of salt’ – than an extradimensional portal roared to life in the ceiling of the kitchen, out of which the writhing red mass of Korbius, the Demonlord of the Octopodiae, fell with a wet plop. That was forty seconds ago.
Byron bent down and picked up the book, showing the strange octopus it’s simple handwritten cover. “This? It’s just a cookbook. My Grandmother, it…it was her cookbook. I don’t understand.”
Korbius recoiled at the further sight of the tome, opening several kitchen cabinets with his tentacles behind him, his eye never losing sight of the book. The tentacles frenetically emptied the cabinets of their contents, sending old nan’s glass and ceramic platters and serving bowls flying into the center of the room. Once they were empty Korbius slithered his entire large mass backwards into the cabinets, just as an octopus might squeeze its entire body into a soda bottle. As he slunk into his impromptu hiding place, Korbius began to beg.
Please, human. Korbius did not know. How could Korbius know human was a Cantor? No, Korbius could not know. It is Korbius’s honor to be in Kitchen. Korbius would never speak ill of Cantor human, or of Kitchen. Korbius is thrall to Cantor human.
Byron’s mind raced at the sudden shift in tone. He turned the book around again and brought the cover very close to his face, staring at the letters written there.
He flashed back to his reading of the recipe: hadn’t he felt a strange thrill down his spine with each ingredient read; Hadn’t his hands shook, almost imperceptibly, as they traced their way down the list?
Suddenly, Byron had a vision of Nan, sitting in her lazy boy, smiling cheek to wrinkled cheek. Even at a century old, glued to that dilapidated recliner, Nan’s eyes still bore her trademark mischievous spark – a look and a smile that seemed to say Adventure awaits – Whether you like it or not.
“I told you you were special Byron.” She said. “That’s why I left you my…cook book.”
She winked, the image disappeared, and when Byron looked back at the front of the book, the title was no longer written in plain black marker, nor did it read ‘Gran’s Cookbook.’ Instead, bold, proud letters in effervescent gold ink, shone impossibly bright and proclaimed a new title:
“The Demon’s Cantos.”
Amazed, Byron flipped through the transformed pages. Where once there was only blue inked recipes for pie and soups, now there was an illuminated manuscript of epic beauty, high quality paper filled with gorgeous illustrations, strange creatures, and spells with astounding names and titles.
Where once there were ingredients, now there were words of power. Where once there was a recipe for chicken soup, now there was a page entitled “To Enthrall An Octopodiae.”
Korbius was now safely ensconced in the corner kitchen cabinet, only his giant eye peering out from the dark through the crack of the open cabinet door. With fear apparent even in his mentally transmitted voice, Korbius asked.
What is my master Cantor’s name?
Byron looked up from the astounding book, his face pale, even awash in the book’s magical glow. Byron could feel his head swimming from the adrenal come down of over-stimulation. Eyes wide with wonder, confusion, and dizziness, Byron swallowed a rising lump in his throat and managed an answer just as he began to tip over.
“Byron.” He muttered, right before falling face first towards the floor, where he would have broken his nose on the tile, had he not been caught by two of Korbius’s hastily extended tentacles.
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