The Demon’s Cantos
Part 19
Things progressed well.
By the end of the day, Byron had manipulated gravity as it related to the small stone in every way he could conceive of. He’d canceled gravity out and let the stone float in the air in front of him, shifting slightly in the breeze. He’d shifted gravity sideways in one direction and then another, causing the stone to fall into the trunk of a palm tree or the side of the house. He reversed gravity straight up and the stone fell into the air instead of toward the ground. Byron and Korbius watched it, astonished, as it rose high into the sky, paused, and then fell back downwards, landing in the sand.
“Nice job,” Tilda said, looking proud, “you didn’t even say the words that time – did you even notice?”
A slow smile spread across Byron’s face, “no, I definitely . . .” he began. But then, thinking back on it, he hadn’t said the words out loud. He had definitely thought them, but they hadn’t come out of his mouth. Moreover, thinking on it now, it felt almost like he had moved a new, undeveloped muscle – like discovering an invisible finger on an invisible hand on an invisible arm. The sensation was invigorating.
“What about bigger things?” Byron asked, looking at Tilda eagerly, “does it work on everything?”
Tilda nodded, finding Byron’s enthusiasm contagious. “Anything with mass,” she answered, “if it exists in physical form it’s being influenced by gravity.” She raised a hand and gave it a twisting motion, as if turning an invisible dial, “you’re just adjusting the levels.”
Byron took a deep breath and rolled his tongue around in his cheek, quickly picking out a nearby palm tree as his target. Once again he held the words in mind – Gravitas Meipsum Imperium – but did not actually speak them. Instead, he searched for that newly discovered part of himself, closing his eyes until he found it, and then, in a sense tensing that ephemeral muscle.
White light glowed around his body once again, gleaming from his eyes. Racing forward a few steps Byron touched the trunk of the palm tree, envisioning it racing upward out of the dirt at many times reverse gravity. White light infused into the wood and for a moment the tree did nothing. Then the sandy soil at the base of the trunk began to quiver and deform. Byron held his breath, racing away from the tree just as it exploded out of the dirt and high into the air. It flew up many times faster than natural gravity would have carried it down.
Byron let out an excited whoop. “This is so cool!” He covered his eyes with one hand as the palm tree rocket passed in front of the wide setting sun, casting an absurd silhouette – fronds on one end, a gigantic network of root tendrils trailing through the air on the other. The tree took a ballistic trajectory from its launch and arced out from the island, landing like a bizarre cruise missile in the distant ocean.
Korbius glarbled in excitement.
Astounding! Send Korbius, Master Byron! Launch Korbius far into your mewling sea!
Korbius ambled up toward Byron and offered his central mass excitedly.
Byron laughed, the otherworldly light fading from his eyes even as his childlike excitement lingered there. “I’m not firing you into the air, Korbius.”
Korbius seemed affronted.
Master Byron implies Korbius would be wounded? Ha Ha Ha, Korbius laughs at such a suggestion, as Master Byron can clearly here – Ha Ha Ha – Behold Korbius’s derisive laughter!
Byron shook his head and turned away from the overeager octopus. “Tilda, this is crazy. You can do this?”
Tilda nodded sheepishly, “since I turned 10.” She looked down at her feet, “it was complicated, I didn’t know how to control it in the beginning.”
Byron tried to imagine being able to access this power as a ten year old – let alone what it would be like not to have it under his control. “That must have been difficult.”
Tilda gave a curt nod but changed the subject quickly, as she often did when conversation moved to her personal history. “There’s more you can do with it though,” she said, beginning to glow herself, “for instance.”
She raised her right hand and pointed at a spot right beside Byron. The sand there, in a one foot wide circle, began to glow white and all of a sudden Byron could barely stand up straight. It felt as if he were being pulled toward the glowing circle of sand, and the pull was significantly more intense than the general downward pull of gravity. He tried to adjust his feet to hold firm against the new force, but he couldn’t get purchase in the shifting sand and he fell two feet toward the new, vigorous source of gravity. He landed on his back with an inaudible plop in the soft white sand and laughed as if he’d been bested in a snow ball fight in Nan’s front lawn.
Tilda continued to glow. “Instead of changing gravity for one object, you can create a new source of gravity that affects the things around it.” Her smile disappeared. “Now, get up,” she said, deadly serious.
Byron looked at her, surprised by the sudden shift in tone. He tried as hard as he could to pull himself to his feet, or even just to roll over on his side, but no matter how much he struggled he could not move an inch. His back was glued to the sand. “I can’t.”
Tilda did not relent. She began to glow brighter and stretched out her hand. “Get up,” she said, even as she increased the gravitic attraction, tugging Byron even harder into the sand.
Byron felt a small swell of panic in his chest as the pull slowly dragged him down into the white sand, making it hard to breath. He struggled again to move but couldn’t, “Tilda, I can’t, I feel like I weigh four hundred pounds.” His back was beginning to ache under the multi-G strain. “Let me up, this hurts.”
Instead, Tilda kept her hand raised and increased the gravity even further. Byron’s hips and abdomen disappeared beneath the sand and he groaned under the strain.
“Fight it,” Tilda demanded, “you need to learn to fight it.”
“Fight what? How?” Byron yelled.
Korbius, watching and feeling Byron’s genuine fear lurched forward, quickly extending three tentacles to get under Byron and lift him up.
But Tilda saw and aimed her glowing hand at a spot behind the giant octopus. That patch of sand also began to glow brightly and Korbius snapped backward toward it as if he’d been hit by an invisible train car, gluing him firmly to the ground.
What is this betrayal, small one!
But Tilda paid no attention. “Fight my will Byron,” she increased the gravity again and Byron sunk another two inches, sand beginning to cover his chest, “you need to fight or you’ll die.”
Byron began to panic in earnest, adrenaline coursing through his body. Working off instinct more than any conscious thought Byron tensed his newly discovered gravitic muscle and began to glow fiercely, his body half obscured by the sands. In his mind, he visualized himself rising upwards at many times the normal force of gravity.
But unlike before, it was as if gravity itself resisted his will. Instead of shooting up into the air Byron only felt a small amount of relief from the downward pull.
Tilda increased the force of her gravity again and eliminated Byron’s gains, speaking as she did so. “When two individuals manipulate the same force,” she began, her voice calm as Byron gasped under the physical and mental strain, “the more complete vision, the stronger will, will always dominate.”
Byron felt the sand inching closer and closer to his open mouth. Korbius flailed the ends of his tentacles uselessly in his periphery, his psychic voice calling to Byron in the chaos. But Byron could barely hear it – he was too frightened, powerless.
It felt to Byron that the white sand was rising up to consume him. His glow faded. He would have screamed but the force of gravity was so intense it held his jaw tightly against the back of his neck. Instead, his face a mask of rigor, barely able to move his eyes in their sockets, Byron sank inexorably down until the sand was over his eyelids, filling his mouth, just about to cover his flared nostrils . . .
With a heavy sigh and wearing a grimace, Tilda lowered her hand and all the glows faded.
The extra gravity pulling Byron and Korbius down spontaneously disappeared. Byron sat up in a burst, taking deep breaths, eager to get air into his newly expandable lungs. “What was that?,” he yelled in a hoarse voice, coughing and spitting sand from his mouth, “You could have killed me!”
Korbius had been applying so much force against Tilda’s efforts that when the gravity disappeared he launched upwards into the air, several meters. He was falling, eye wide, when he began to glow lightly and instead floated gently down toward the sand.
“I wish there was more time for you to enjoy this, Byron, I really do,” Tilda began as she slowly lowered Korbius to the ground, “But in a few weeks will have to fight, and beating the Unmaker is going to be a lot tougher than defeating a palm tree.”
Byron considered her words while on his back in the sand, his immediate angry reaction fading as every muscle in his body ached from the recent effort. He forced himself to ask the question that had just popped into his mind.
“Can the Unmaker do this?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, “It can do almost anything you can do – nearly the full power of the Cantos is available to It.”
“I don’t understand, I thought these were the Almighty’s powers.” Byron looked hopelessly up at the vibrant colors of approaching evening. “How can the Unmaker use them?”
“I don’t know exactly what the Unmaker is – They never said – maybe no one knows.” Tilda pursed her lips and looked down at the sand, “Mary used to say the Unmaker was balance – darkness to match the Almighty’s light – destruction to match creation – hatred to match love.”
Byron turned his head in the sand and looked toward Tilda. “What do you think?”
Tilda fixed her almond shaped eyes on his and Byron saw something in them he could not put a name to. A grandness her diminutive form belied. It left him wondering how he had not seen it before.
“I don’t give a damn what It is,” Tilda said, her voice filled with determination and barely smothered rage, “if we don’t destroy It, It will destroy everything.” She repeated the final word, driving it home like a stake through his heart. “Everything.”
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