Harmonic Magic Series Boxed Set

by P. E. Padilla

  “I am Silicim Mant, of the Arzbedim,” the maggot said, “and you are our captive. You need not hope for escape because we will squeeze every bit of power from you before we toss your wasted, drained corpse to the animals of the forest. Cooperate with us and you will have a quick death instead of a long, painful one.”

  Silicim Mant turned to leave the room, stopped, turned toward Grayson and looked him in the eyes. Red rimmed orbs with solid black pupils bore into Grayson’s brown eyes. “Oh, and welcome to Gythe.” He chuckled as he left, motioning for another figure hovering over an array of wicked looking torture devices to begin his work.

  Grayson screamed as he had never screamed before in his life.

  Chapter 1

  Sam Sharp floated in midair, surrounded by total darkness. He controlled his breathing: in through the nose—two, three, four, five—out through the mouth—two, three, four, five. Sam tried to clear his mind, but was having trouble. His thoughts were swirling faster than he could dispel them. But he kept trying.

  Amidst the stray thoughts came images of a scientific symposium he had attended many years before. The topic was ancient cultures that had used sound as an energy source, even using it to move the great stone blocks used to build structures like the pyramids. Sound and vibration, atomic motion, harmonics…he pictured a mammoth block of stone vibrating and then a good portion of it becoming transparent, causing the rest of it to lift off the ground.

  He forced his mind to focus. With great effort, he purged his thoughts of everything but the image of himself floating in the darkness, and then then removed even his own image, leaving him looking into the darkest black imaginable, a total absence of anything. With his breathing controlled and regular, he began to feel the calmness, soon followed by the familiar light-headed feeling.

  An image of a statue Sam often used as a focal point appeared before him. It was in the form of a bald little man sitting with his legs crossed, hands resting lightly in his lap. Rotating the familiar object in his mind and seeing its detail and texture, his body relaxed even further.

  Methodically, he caused the image of the statue to fade and disappear altogether, allowing him to shift his mental viewpoint to the depth of the darkness within his mind. He saw a single point of light wink into existence. It was a pin-prick of pure white in the inky blackness, shining like a tiny sun. He concentrated, bending the light to his will. It increased in size, resolving itself into a classic atomic image, with the electrons orbiting around the central nucleus. His mind wandered. The actual picture in his mind could have taken any shape. The current configuration was purely arbitrary. Why had he chosen this image? He wondered, but then he cast the thought from his mind, trying to clear it once again.

  Sam willed the atom to begin to vibrate. It pulsed and emitted a slight whining noise and a barely noticeable increase in the light that was only visible because of the black background. The still-dim light rhythmically fluctuated in and out of view within his thoughts. From the the image of the single atom, he began to build upon it. He realized that he was sweating in the real world from the effort he was exerting, a very uncharacteristic thing in his meditations.

  As his concentration increased and he exerted his will more forcefully, he called upon another atom to take up the synchronous vibration, then another, and another. As he built atom upon atom, the image formed a larger object. First indistinct, it became clearer as more atoms were added. Soon, it was stretching, becoming something else, doing so at a faster and faster rate. It became his body again, still floating in the blackness but this time wavering slightly, vibrating. He could feel his entire body resonating, not just in his thoughts, but in truth. The oscillations tickled slightly, but he ignored the feeling and became more absorbed in the process to control the timing of the fluctuations.

  With his entire body vibrating, he discovered that he was able to modulate the frequency of his vibrations. He experimented for several minutes, changing the timing and intensity. When he felt some modicum of control over his body and its surroundings, he felt comfortable enough to leap for the next level in his experiment.

  Sam Sharp took a quick breath and snapped all the particles in his body and those of his surroundings into a harmonious whole, vibrating at the same rate. As he did so, he felt his entire reality spin violently and then suddenly settle. He opened his eyes and looked around. He was in the same room as moments before, but it somehow seemed different. What was it? He stood and headed toward the door, absently rubbing the head of the statue of the bald little man, which was resting on a small table, still trying to figure out what was different about the room.

  He stopped as he was reaching for the doorknob. A feeling washed over him, as if the knob was beckoning him in some way. It was just a light tickle, as if someone was brushing his spine with a feather while at the same time as if he was holding a magnet near a large chunk of iron. There was a force there that was pulling him, tugging his hand toward the knob. He closed his eyes briefly, concentrated on extending his vibrations along his arm, beyond his hand and toward the door knob. Then, he opened his eyes and jerked his hand ever-so-slightly to the right. To his surprise, the knob shook, twisted, and then turned with an audible click. The door swung silently open. He leaned hard into the wall, looking at his hand as if not recognizing it. After inspecting the doorknob, knocking on it and turning it this way and that, he confirmed that it was just the same old doorknob he had been turning for years. At least, that was what it seemed like now. He shook his head, doubting what he thought he saw and felt, and headed toward his front door.

  Sam turned the front door knob in a more conventional manner and realized immediately that he was not in the same familiar surroundings. Instead of his quiet little street greeting his eyes, there was his solitary home surrounded by dense forest, with no evidence of other people as far as he could see. Which, admittedly, was not far. He couldn't see the horizon because the trees were so dense, and his vision was reduced to a few dozen feet in some directions because of the thick forest that surrounded him. His heart was pounding so hard he heard its beating inside his head. What if there were no other people? Where was he? How did he get here? Maybe more importantly, could he get back to where he belonged? He sat down hard on his front step, wondering what he had gotten himself into.

  Sam thought back to earlier in the day. He had spent the morning doing little chores around his house. His small house always had things that needed to be cleaned, repaired, or replaced. It was, after all, over forty years old, so it was to be expected. The back door needed a bit of trimming so it didn’t stick just before closing, some paint was peeling in the bathroom over the shower, and that pesky drain in the master bathroom had to be cleared out because it was draining slowly again. Of course, there was yard work that needed to be done as well. All in all, it was a productive morning. He felt good that he had finished all his little self-appointed tasks.

  While doing his chores, Sam’s mind wandered and he thought back, for some reason, to the scientific symposium he attended at a local college when he was just twelve years old. Back then, fifteen years ago, he thought he was going to be a scientist someday. He enjoyed—in fact, still did enjoy—learning all he could about anything and everything. Though much of the information at the symposium was too advanced for him, he had a good enough grasp of science that he was not completely lost as he listened. He was mesmerized by the theoretical physics and astrophysics presentations, wild fantasies filling his pre-teen mind.

  His favorite part was a speech by a rather unlikely-looking fellow. Though his name was lost amongst all his memories, Sam remembered the man, and what he spoke about, clearly

  The next speaker came up to the podium. He was tallish, thin, and slightly stooped as if he was constantly bending over to look at something and his body decided to remain in that position. His long, sandy-blonde hair seemed to have its own opinion as to how it would lie on the man’s narrow head, but the man seemed unperturbed by it. The ill-fitti
ng glasses on his face slid down his nose often as he spoke and he slid them back up into position automatically. He reminded Sam of the toys he had seen, the lanky bird that could be placed on the edge of a drinking glass and nudged so that it bobbed up and down, miming drinking from the glass.

  “Vibrations,” the man started, “were manipulated and used by ancient societies to do wondrous things.” The man’s animated style held Sam captive. His passion and excitement for his subject was obvious, and contagious.

  “Imagine, if you will, ancient people tasked with building great structures, structures that must last for centuries. With not even simple machines, how would they move the great stone blocks into place? How indeed!” The man strode across the narrow stage, his voice clear even though he was not in front of the microphone.

  “These ancient people, arguably knowing more about wave theory and quantum mechanics than we ourselves did until very recently, were able to change the vibration of solid stone. They were able to make a large portion of the stone phase out, go somewhere else, causing the remaining stone to be light enough to move.”

  He waved his arms as he stalked the stage, his voice rising in intensity and excitement. “Yes, they could do this, with musical instruments, drums and simple flutes and the like. It was in this way that the great structures of the past were built. But that’s not all. They used vibratory energy for other things, some even more miraculous.”

  There was much the man said after that, things that were too technical for Sam’s twelve year old, untrained brain to decipher, but one basic tenet stuck with Sam. “All matter, which is constantly moving at an atomic level, is very close to vibrating at the speed of light. With just a little push, that matter could convert to a form that was basically energy, phasing into a different plane, or dimension.”

  Some modern experiments seemed to confirm this, but in general the scientific community did not want to profess belief in something that seemed so akin to wizardry.

  Sam left the the symposium thinking about what he had heard. He also thought about how many in the audience had heckled and ridiculed the poor, shaggy man. In fact, the man had gathered his materials and rushed out of the lecture hall to escape the jeers and laughter that were pursuing him. With the information and experience securely tucked away in the recesses of his mind, Sam went about his life without thinking too much on the subject for years.

  Today, though, he thought about that speech and it got his mind whirling in many different directions. When he finished his chores and cleaned up, he decided it was a good time for a little meditation before he had to go to work for his swing shift.

  Sam looked around his sparsely furnished little house and smiled at the eclectic collection of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and scrolls he had collected. In his constant search for answers, or sometimes questions, he had dabbled in many different fields of knowledge, all of which he loved. In fact, he had never met a field of study that he didn’t want to pursue further. Recently, he had been studying many of the characteristically eastern subjects such as yoga, meditation, and, of course the requisite bodily exercise, including several types of martial arts. He was by no means proficient in the physical aspect of these systems, but training his body to do new things allowed him to become more in touch with it, which helped in his meditation.

  Sam had tried several methods of meditation and had devised his own hybrid style that worked for him. It was not purely of one system, but was something that felt right. Recently, he had been able to achieve a state of such utter tranquility that he loathed letting it end, only to be returned to the same old humdrum world and its boring reality. In fact, so passionate was he about his new hobby, he set aside one of the three rooms in the house as his meditation room.

  The meditation room was small, but that was all right. Containing only a thick woven rug of indeterminate far eastern origin, a lamp that could be dimmed, a small table on which he could place tea or incense, and bamboo scrolls on the wall depicting peaceful mountain landscapes and seascapes, it was simple but ideal. The room fairly radiated tranquility and just entering the room and standing in it made Sam feel at ease.

  Adding to the room’s peaceful feeling was an item placed directly in the center of the little table. The small metal statue was in the form of a man with his legs crossed and with his hands resting lightly in his lap. The little man’s eyes were closed, with a look of complete serenity on his face. Sam didn’t even remember where he had gotten the statue—he’d had it for as long as he could remember—but he did know that it always made him feel good when he looked at it. When searching for some kind of focal point to use for his meditation, it was the obvious choice. He rubbed the little man’s bald head for luck and smiled.

  His watch showed almost 11:00 in the morning. Sam had decided he would meditate for an hour or so before going to work that evening. It always helped to do so before swing shift so that he could wash away the stresses of the day and go to work energized and calm. He closed the door and settled into his loose cross-legged position. The memory of that symposium from so many years ago suddenly popped into his head. A slow smile eased onto his face for a moment as he was reminiscing. Regaining his focus, he began to clear his mind as he always did in preparation to meditate.

  Sam slowed his breathing into a regular pattern, visualizing pure, cleansing air entering his body and lazily making its way down toward the center of his energy just below his navel, only to diffuse into his body from that central point. As he exhaled, he visualized the soot-colored “bad” air with all its stresses, toxins, and worries migrate up through his chest and throat to be expelled from his body through his mouth.

  Breathing in and out at slow, regular intervals, he purposely targeted individual areas of his body and relaxed them, working slowly from his toes to the top of his head. He soon achieved the familiar light-headed feeling of peace, but an unwanted thought intruded. Instead of rejecting it right away, he pondered it for a moment and decided the time was right to experiment a little bit. Which brought him to where he was now, in a strange forest in an unknown location.

  Sam realized that his panic and frustration were counterproductive. He straightened his back, crossed his legs where he was on his front porch and began to breathe rhythmically. He focused on the core of his energy, the center of his life force. The picture of the little statue in his mind caused calm to flow through him in a warm wave. With a few minutes of calming breaths, he felt better able to address his situation. His eyes slowly opened, taking in the surroundings anew.

  The landscape was beautiful. Breathtaking, in fact. Sam stood and turned in a slow circle to take in all of the scenery. He noted that there was vegetation as far as he could see, with mountains on one side peeking out above the treetops, breaking up the vast green canopy before him. Sounds of small living things assaulted his ears now that he was paying attention to them. Other than that, though, it was very quiet. There was no road noise, no people talking, no generators, compressors, or other signs of technology buzzing in the background. It was almost frightening. He had never realized how pervasive the sound of modern living was.

  From the corner of his eye, Sam caught the slight motion of a trembling bush. The weak breeze was not enough to move the foliage as it was moving. He felt some force or intuition drawing his attention there. It seemed to radiate some kind of warmth that went straight to his brain. Going within himself, as he did when he meditated, he projected his mind, his imagination, toward the bush and was surprised when he was able to discern life within it. He narrowed his focus to be more receptive. Images of food, small furred figures that emanated warmth, and larger shapes with long teeth that caused his skin to prickle with goose bumps entered his mind.

  Intuitively, he projected his thoughts in the form of other images, ones of himself in an elongated form, as if viewed from ground level looking upward. Along with these, he projected a feeling of warmth, compassion, and comfort. Then he waited.

  After several mi
nutes, a small, brown furry face poked out of the bush, looked to the left and the right, then looked directly at him. As its eyes met his, the creature’s widened and the face retreated back into the bush. Several seconds later, it emerged again, this time followed by a short round body covered entirely in brown fur with a thin tail that looked somewhat like a bottle-brush. At first, Sam thought it may have been a large beaver, but the tail and face were all wrong. He decided that it looked more like a lemur than a beaver, but he knew that was not correct either.

  The creature’s little face was whiskered and wise-looking while at the same time being filled with the wonder of innocence. Its small teeth looked better suited to fruit than meat, Sam was happy to see. Large, luminous green eyes, which were still wide in trepidation were oddly without pupils. As the little creature padded over on raccoon-like paws, Sam noticed its furry round ears twitching. Looking into those eyes, Sam could see intelligence.

  While the the little figure was scampering toward him, he remained perfectly still so as not to frighten it. The creature, shaking visibly, approached him, stopping mere inches from his foot. Bending slowly, Sam leaned over and offered his hand to the furry head. Because it seemed right to do so, he concentrated on sending comforting thoughts to the strange animal to make sure it didn’t become frightened.

  Sniffing his hand, the little creature seemed to make up its mind and immediately presented the top of its head, pushing it against Sam’s hand. Taking this as his cue, Sam lightly petted its furry head, scratching its ears briefly. The friendship being sealed, the little animal curled up at his feet and closed its eyes. Calm, comfortable feelings floated from the animal into his mind. It seemed that he had made a friend in this strange world. A good start, he thought to himself.

  “What will I call you?” Sam said to the creature. It looked up at him, blinked its large green eyes, closed them slowly, and put its head back down. Feelings of comfort seeped into Sam’s mind. Well, no help there..