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The Demon’s Cantos Part 30

As the sound of Korbius’s incredible blow echoed to a sliver and disappeared over the distant ocean, Byron took in the moonlit scene in astonishment. The air was crisp and clear, the Unmaker’s pestilence swept out to sea and dispersed into the atmosphere. The evil looking spirits, the corrupted souls of the Unmaker’s Faces were no where to be seen.

Korbius still towered into the air, like a Titan from ancient Greek myths. Byron couldn’t help but wonder whether the rest of the world was reacting to the events on Ocracoke, and if so, what the hell they were doing. After all, this strange battle was happening less than 20 miles from the coast of North Carolina and Korbius towered at least 4 miles high from the top of his head to the bottom of his tentacles.

In the shock of victory, Byron stared up at the Octopus and imagined how this whole scene looked from the International Space station. Korbius loosed a hurricane force gurgle of success that rumbled wetly through the air.

Victory Master Byron! Korbius destroyed the enemy, as Master Byron predicted.

Still floating in mid-air, gravity canceled out and glowing bright white, Byron smiled up at his impossibly large friend. There was no point trying to speak to Korbius out loud – Byron was literally miles away from wherever the Octopus kept its ears. Instead, Byron closed his eyes and focused on thinking a clear message.

Nice job, Korbius. Now we just need to wait for the portal to open again.

Tilda had assured Byron that no amount of abuse would destroy the portal on the real world side. In reality, she said, it didn’t really exist in the real world at all. So long as the island remained stable and intact, the portal would eventually open up again – although Byron had no idea how long it would take after expending so much energy transporting Korbius here.

Looking down at the shattered landscape of the island, Byron was no longer even sure where the portal was. There was nothing down there but scorched sand and smoldering fires. Not a single living thing survived on Ocracoke island – human or animal. The Unmaker had seared it all to a crisp and the wind had taken the ashes. Byron felt a tear on his cheeks as he bore witness to the destruction of the place that had once been so important to him.

As Byron looked on, Korbius raised his humongous tentacle up off the dirt. It stretched across the width of the island, and as he lifted it up the muddy sand and salt water poured into the wide channel it left behind. Byron scanned the ground for the Unmaker’s body, but he could not find it.

Korbius still remained fixed over the remnants of the island, two tentacles supporting him, like the two giant legs of a statuary colossus. His nearly mile high eyeball fixed upon Byron and the gigantic pupil dilated with an audible sound, like the squeezing of water out of a gigantic dish sponge.

Master Byron, is it necessary to reduce Korbius’s size? Korbius is enjoying being so large. Consider, no foe could ever defeat Master Byron with giant Korbius at his side!

Byron laughed, as much at Korbius as out of sheer relief. They’d really done it, his plan, absurd as it seemed, really worked. Byron sent Korbius a mental answer.

You’ve got until that portal opens up again and then I’m —

A line of savage yellow light appeared in the air, cutting straight up out of the roiling mud of the island. The beam was perfectly straight and incredibly long, stretching for tens of miles into the sky. Neither Byron nor Korbius had a moment to react before the beam twitched left and downward, right through the mid-section of one of Korbius’s huge tentacles. The beam passed through Korbius’s gelatinous flesh like a scalpel through Jello.

Korbius let out a feral gurgle of pain, leaping away from the beam and landing several miles to the east. He left behind the miles long, severed half of one of his tentacles. Korbius landed and kicked up a tidal wave, while Byron gaped in horror as the entire writhing mass of the severed limb began its cataclysmic fall to the ocean below. Between Korbius’s landing and the landing of the tentacle, the air shook with kinetic violence and the sound was so great that Byron could do nothing but make a futile effort to cover his ears.

The beam of light snapped off, its destructive end briefly trailing out into the clear night sky before disappearing from sight. Byron’s gaze swung down towards the impact zone on the island, looking for the source of the attack.

He did not have to look for long.

A menacing laugh filled Byron’s mind, less manic than before, more controlled, perhaps even satisfied. Byron felt the force behind the laugh trying to overpower him again, but this time it was weaker, less focused, and Byron resisted.

A shadow appeared within the crater of Korbius’s making. It started as a splotch of extreme darkness and expanded, upward and out, until it took on the form of a man – then it kept growing, up toward the sky.

The Unmaker towered over the world. It was not unharmed by Korbius’s attack, in fact, its left arm hung dead at his side, the fingers and forearm mangled. But the rest of It stood firm and ready, even eager.

Korbius watched the Unmaker from several miles away, the wound at his tentacle seared and cauterized by the blinding power of the Unmaker’s fiery beam.

By the time the Unmaker finished growing into the sky, Byron was little more than a mote floating beside him – a little speck of white light, as menacing as a firefly to a giant. All hope seeped out of Byron’s soul, replaced by creeping panic.

As Byron stared up, the Unmaker’s upper body twisted around, in that slow, titanic motion of gargantuan things. It twisted and twisted, and then its neck twisted, and its head tilted forward, until eventually the larger than life blackness of its vacant face, a starless night sky in and of itself, stared blankly at Byron. It was so large, so vacuous, that looking into it, Byron felt like a man standing on the edge of a borehole cut to the center of the Earth. If he wasn’t careful, it seemed to Byron, he would fall right into that blackness, and never stop falling.

A giant hand made of shadow began to cut across the darkened air, its fingers wide, it’s palm exposed. Byron watched it approach, dumbfounded and awestruck. At the last moment, before the hand’s crushing grip was about to consume him, Byron came to his senses and tried to flee, increasing his gravity many times to the east so that he fell sideways, at speed, through the air. But it was too little, too late. The hand was upon him, it’s encompassing darkness ready to crush him into nothing, the fingers beginning to curl into a immense fist.

An monumental crash shook Byron’s chest – the sound of several mountains worth of mint jelly slamming full force into several mountains worth of human flesh. The world turned upside down in the aftermath of the impact and the shock wave sent Byron flying through the air. The giant hand swung away from him, a huge tentacle wrapped around its wrist.

Swinging around, Byron watched as Korbius and the Unmaker flew bodily through the air – two cataclysmic forces engaged in combat. Korbius had two tentacles already wrapped around each of the Unmakers remaining appendages, and the last wrapped around its shadowy neck. The strike caught the Unmaker by surprise and the two flew back, landing farther out into the Atlantic Ocean with a colossal splash. An undulating wave of water spread out from the spot where they hit, like a living, struggling rock thrown into the surface of a still lake.

Unsure how he could help, Byron nonetheless set himself falling across the sky toward the two giant creatures. They struggled in the salty deeps of the Atlantic, the Unmaker trying to keep his head above water in a way that implied to Byron that he might be capable of drowning.

Byron could see Korbius’s immense tentacles coiling tight around the Unmaker’s legs, arm, and neck, and as Byron approached he heard a definitive, ear-splitting crack, as though an ancient pillar of rock had finally shattered under the pressure of time. A bizarre, unsettling yell filled the night air. Byron realized the horrible noise was coming from the Unmaker’s physical form just as he saw that tell-tale glow of furnace fire appear on the Unmaker’s dark face.

Byron struggled to focus a clear thought to Korbius.

Watch out, the fire!

No sooner had Byron thought the words than Korbius heaved his central mass out from in front of the light – less than a second before the murderous beam appeared again, hissing right through the air where Korbius’s eyeball had been a moment earlier.

The beam shot out of the mass of arms and tentacles in an unbroken stream, lancing far into the night sky, perfectly straight and dancing left and right, up and down as the Unmaker struggled to strike at Korbius with it. Korbius deftly held his malleable bulk out of the way, all the while using the tentacle wrapped around the Unmaker’s neck to keep the beam off him.

Byron was less than a half mile away when the Unmaker changed tactics. Suddenly, he switched targets, giving in to Korbius’s pressure and aiming the beam at the two tentacles holding down his right arm. Korbius couldn’t react fast enough and in the blink of an eye two more tentacles were severed.

Korbius arced back, eye wide, and loosed another wet yell that shook through Byron’s chest even a quarter mile away. At the same time, the Unmaker’s right arm shot up from several hundred feet below the surface of the ocean where Korbius had been holding it and reached for the tentacle wrapped around Its neck.

Korbius raised the stubs of his severed arms, still thick and nearly a mile long, and made to bash the Unmaker in the face with them. But the Unmaker saw them coming and sliced at them with his beam, this time take them off nearly at the base of Korbius’s central mass and sending the two huge appendages flying by their own momentum miles out to sea. At the same time, The Unmaker’s hand began to glow a bright yellow.

Byron watched in horror as The Unmaker grabbed a tentacle and sent yellow lightning arced across Korbius’s enormous body. For a few awful moments Korbius still struggled against the onslaught, even as he lost control of his tentacles which went limp. For miles in every direction the Atlantic glowed in patches of electric power and everything from fish to whales began bobbing to the surface.

Korbius managed to get one more weak blow in, barely impacting the Unmaker’s chest before his giant eye shut beneath the coursing electricity.

There was a moment of abject silence as the Unmaker quieted his glowing hand and gathered himself from beneath Korbius’s limp body. Byron stared, mouth open and soundless, rage burning a hole in his stomach .

With tremendous speed and power, the Unmaker’s right hand swung up in a fist and struck Korbius in the center of his dead weight. Byron screamed an impotent curse as the wind buffeted his face, taking his angry tears with it.

The blow was so strong it sent Korbius’s skipping across the surface of the ocean for dozens of miles, like a small stone skipped across a lake, before, finally, coming to a rest. Korbius’s gelatinous form lost its shape and the King of Octopodiae sunk down below foam-crested waves.

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