The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Thirty-Four

He concentrated, deeply and forcefully, looking inward and seizing the contents of the well of energy in his transmogrified brain, and psychokinetic hooks created by his mind lashed out like the ends of bullwhips. They seized onto the subatomic electromagnetic lattice that composed the massive, fluctuating field of attraction between the whirlpool and the micro-mood that hovered some distance overhead. The ends of the extrasensory lashes wrapped buried themselves deep into the lattice and began pulling in different directions, warping and pulling apart the neat sequentiality of the lattice, breaking the quantum atomic bonds of the gravity field. Externally, Norrin began to hyper-ventilate and shake, his clenched teeth beginning to chatter, his body unnaturally taut and his muscles straining as he forced his mind to exert its influence over the power of the gravitometric field. His eyes had rolled back into their sockets and scarlet tears began running from their corners. His ears began to bleed. He began to snort thick clots of crimson mucous from his distended nostrils. The agony was beyond excruciating. He coughed and convulsively expelled a small flap of torn flesh.

Thousands of tons of sea water moved. The winds that fanned the waves of the harbor began to howl.

What he did, he did despite the limitations of human biology, mutated or otherwise. Despite the wondrous attributes and unknown possibilities inherent within the human mind, no living creature could ever create the amplitude of bioelectrical energy needed to even attempt such a staggering act of telekinesis. The power to do what he did was from elsewhere. From Outside. He was not the source of the energy affecting the colossal volume of turbulent water, but was instead more of a conduit and a managing locus for that energy. He controlled it. He focused it. He let it flow through him, unleashing it.

The whirlpool began to gradually rise, its shape inverting as massive currents of water flipped over upon themselves, and the massive spinning vortex took on the dancing conical shape of a spiraling liquid tower of gargantuan proportions.

Vyngreak Norrin's extended hands slowly and langorously waved in towards his body as he drew Guarfaghn in towards the shore...

... towards the city.

The spiraling cone of water moved haltingly towards land.

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*** As irritatingly unpleasant as a splinter under a finger nail, it had vexed and haunted him for as long as he could remember. Though he had always been possessed of a curious nature and burdened with the soul of a wanderer, he had been forced to admit to himself that he had not wanted the knowledge that had been imparted to him. Reality itself was not as he'd originally understood it to be. It was broader, stranger and far more complex than he'd even had the capacity to imagine. And he'd learned that Reality was coldly logical in an unhuman and savagely impartial way that flew in the face of every concept of religious faith to which he'd ever been exposed. He had seen no evidence of an afterlife's paradise, seen no heaven, and seen no hell. But he HAD seen into windows looking in on shifting, metamorphosing pockets of TimeSpace no human had ever before known to exist. As a result of his investigations, he'd seen too much and neither his mind nor his soul had been ready for it.

The Multiverse was a cruel and exacting taskmaster, a cosmic para-celestial spider's web, an incredibly vast and deep ocean of varied actualities unconcerned with and apathetic to the existance of Humanity. Everything everywhere was somehow in some way connected, even if only tenuously, but at the center of it All, a swirling cloud of unidentifiable Nothingness hungrily cannibalized the numerous and diverse strands of the greater parent web.