The Full Power of the Eye

Illustrated by Tula Wild.

“Can you see it? There. Look out of the corner of your eye… There. A glint of bone, a curling horn–can you see it? It stands, crouches, exists. Just beyond your reach, or is it just within? Too close– can you feel its breath? I hear it's like black oil smeared on skin. Carrion rotting in your hands. Do you have the strength to retreat? The answer is irrelevant. I know you don’t.”

There was a thing, indiscernible when looked upon with the full power of the eye, standing, crouching, existing beneath the archway. From the corner of his gaze he could glimpse the ivory curve of a horn, or a bone, or teeth, flashing in the dim light. Did it move towards him? Did the earth shift and groan below, or was the tremor he felt that of his shaking limbs?

It did move. A drifting scent of carrion smeared itself across his skin like black oil as it breathed, closer, closer, closer. And did he have the strength to move away, to mirror its advance with a retreat? 

He did not.

But there were no worlds in which he could stand and bear the click and scratch of claws, or the slap of something wet and heavy by his heels for a single moment longer. The sounds sent nausea, thick and cold, slithering down his throat. He turned, and the action felt akin to the spinning of the earth on its axis.  

“You have courage, young one, to turn your back on such a thing as this. I commend you.”

The voice, the velvet of sky stretched between stars, the whispering of branches atop a mountain peak, snickered. He felt the vibration of that sound in his bones.  

“The Gods are watching closely now, make no mistake. Remember it was I who turned my gaze to you first. To the mortal sharing breath with a monster. If you survive we might be friends.”

A step. It would require as much strength to take a step as to move mountains, to crash continents together. To take a breath was to hold the ocean in his mouth, waves crashing against teeth, spilling salt into his lungs. 

He would do it. Survive and become friends with the darkness. Or die and sink beneath the earth. Would it be so bad to rest? Would it be so bad to yield and feel the kiss of soil on skin that has so rarely felt kindness?  

He blinked and was alive. Breathed, and washed away the honeyed whisperings of the Gods who watched him. 

“Ah, they do more than watch. Can you hear them? They bet on your survival, wagering boons far from your crass mortal gold. One offers up a beam of starlight.” 

The darkness laughed again, brushed soft fingers over his lips. 

“Are you pleased? Or is your worth greater than the jewelled fires of night? It is true that the pride of mortals rivals that of kings, I know it to be so.”

A step. He waded forward through terror as though through a lake, ripping off the phantom fingers which snagged at his legs, his clothes, his hair like seaweed. If humanity’s pride fuelled him, if the indignation he felt at dying in such a place, in such a way, if these things allowed him to take a step, then he would not scorn them. And if the voice of night itself had chosen to believe he might survive, who was he to prove it wrong? Who was he to prove anything to a god? 

He took a step. 

Although, he thought. Perhaps these immortals in their stale omniscience would find pleasure in being proven wrong, in a way that the fragile human ego never could. 

Another step. A click, a scrape, a breath carrying with it the stench of decay and grief and lies. 

Tired. He was so tired. But the doorway was close now, an open maw which he could hardly remember entering through. The minutes he had spent in this room were endless. Seconds looping endlessly from one to sixty. Endless contractions of lungs and endless blinking of eyelids. 

Another step. 

“How many steps has it been?” 

Another step. 

“How many days has it been?”

Another step.

“Isn’t it hard to keep your eyes open?”

It was. Every dry and grinding movement from hip to knee to foot was filled with longing. To escape. To die. Weren’t they the same? A blink lasted a second, then ten, thirty. Each moment of it spent in blissful darkness. If he slept, would that be so bad? 

“Yes.”

...

He awoke. And there was a thing beneath the archway, indiscernible when looked upon with the full power of the eye. It approached, he trembled… had he not done this before? A step, a step, a step, each harder than the last. Then sleep. 

…

There was a thing. Bones. Horns. Carrion. Black oil. Teeth. Walk, child. Wake, child.   

“Can you smell it yet? Your own decay. It might be hard to tell that it’s coming from you and not the monster.”

A step. The doorway one millimetre closer. The thing left one millimetre behind. It would be enough. He would reach the doorway before he slept, before the seconds looped back to zero. 

“How many years has it been?”

A step. One eye had fallen to writhing blackness. It was not an empty dark. Not a blissful dark.  

“How many years has it been since you looked at your hands?” 

The darkness laughed as he looked, finally, upon himself. 

“A shame, how fleeting human beauty is.”

Loose skin hanging from white bones. Soured, stained grey by decades of stepping and sleeping and looping. This was the trap. This was the folly of a mortal facing a monster. A century was nothing to a god. 

“A shame,” 

The thing was not indiscernible when it stepped before him, finally leaving its post beneath the arch. When he glimpsed his own white hair and toothless mouth in the reflection of its gaze. When he saw the maggots wriggling and feasting in the socket of his eye. When its lips parted. 

“That you could never stay awake.”