Ephemeral
Calvin’s father used to say that most men went their entire lives without truly owning a space. Every door was a choice: you can walk into a room a thousand times and leave no impression, no memory that you were there, or you can be a lord within its walls. Confidence, Calvin thought. All you need is confidence.
He brushed his hand against the grain of the doorway, reclaiming it with his fingertips. He took a deep breath, hummed a few notes, and pushed himself beyond the threshold.
He sighed in relief. It was dangerous to bring creatures into unclaimed spaces, and Calvin had to admit that he was at least twenty years too old for danger. Bookshelves as tall as houses surrounded him on all sides, and each of their shelves were filled with hundreds of tomes. Despite all his years and all his readings, the contents of this room represented at least ten thousand books he hadn’t studied and the decades of life beyond his years that he would need to do it.
His chest tightened and his hands shook violently, and a flash seared through the room. Glass exploded from Calvin’s hand, and he cast aside the melted husk of the flashlight. His gradual descent into old age made it difficult to control himself, and each outburst accelerated his illness. It wouldn’t be much longer before his knuckles were too tight to button his own shirt, cook his own meals, or even wipe himself. For posterity’s sake, he tried not to linger on that last thought.
He brushed a few pieces of plastic from his cardigan and diligently adjusted his glasses. He took a moment to admire the enormity of his surroundings and grasped at the air above him. His hand plunged into the fabric of reality, clutched a mote of formless knowledge in the space between, pulled it into the room, and stitched reality back together. It would be a few years before the room would heal, but safety was guaranteed for as long as Calvin truly owned the space and did not yield it to any other master.
Calvin bestowed the mote a form as an orb of golden light. It was simple, but it would suffice for a lower being. In his youth, Calvin could shape the motes as faeries, ethereal but beautiful and with distinct personalities that responded to complex commands. But after his outburst, he didn’t dare to extend himself further than he already had. The mote whirred around the room, drawn to each book like a fly to rotting fruit.
“Little one,” he said. “Little one. Find it, find it.” The first articulation of the words caught the attention of the spirit, and their second utterance bound them to the mote. It flickered and circled upwards around the room, where it danced and bounded blissfully between the shelves. In the North-East quadrant of the room, thirty feet above his head, the mote flickered excitedly.
Calvin smiled. “Drop it, drop it!”
The mote attached itself to the book, pulled it out, and dropped it to the floor. Calvin extended his hand and willed the book into his palm, allowing the leather-bound tomb to place itself in his hands as though it had always been there. Of course, this was only the second time he’d ever seen it, but reality doesn’t need much truth to be made real.
“Thank you, thank you.” The mote shook violently and ruptured, but its essence provided the room with enough magic for Calvin to simulate the glow of daylight. He willed the book to hover in front of him, unfolded its spine and searched its pages.
He stopped when he identified the word he needed, embroidered into the page with fine hair from a young brunette. ‘ASAG’, the Sumerian lord of sickness. It had analogous names in many other cultures: Shakpana, Beelzebub, Sekhmet. Calvin nodded and extended his arms over the book. Confidence, he thought. This is your space.
He spoke passages from the page and a breeze stirred around him to drown out his words. As his voice grew louder, the wind grew more powerful. Books lifted from the shelves and clamored on the floorboards around him. It challenged him with every syllable, cast off his glasses, and threatened to crush him under a mound of tomes, but Calvin held his ground. The wind churned into a storm, and the books became a torrent of pages that cascaded from their towering ledges.
With a thunderous clap, Calvin combined the currents that encircled him and wrought the demon from their dissonance. A mere mote is content with a simple form, but a lord of demons requires a shape that does justice to its title. Calvin poured his remaining strength into the creature, and gave it a shape befitting of a lord: seven bright eyes like distant candles, a carapace as strong and red as rubies, a bestial visage, and thirteen hulking legs with human hands affixed to each end. It stood eighteen feet tall and its monstrous gait affirmed its stature as primordial nobility.
“I plea to you,” said Calvin as he bowed. His knees twinged and ached. “Undo this power! I was married to her for sixty years, and wasn’t much of a husband. But I swear I didn’t mean it! I swear it! It’s just…she just…I couldn’t…”
He gazed at Asag in each of its seven eyes. “I couldn’t control it.”
Asag’s mouth quivered, its mandibles scratched against teeth that weren’t quite human, but weren’t quite anything else. It approached Calvin and solemnly placed one of its many erroneous hands on his shoulder. Asag crushed Calvin’s collarbone, tore him from hip to shoulder, and plunged its maw in his belly. Calvin’s scream pierced through the room, but there was no one around to hear as Asag gorged on his entrails. Only Calvin’s inscrutable lust for knowledge lingered beyond the fabric of the room that he claimed, and awaited someone to give it form.
999 Words