Watching Eyes

[ContestedSnow 1435]

 

WATCHING EYES

 

 

The second wyrm is called Ishtar, and she goes forth to destroy and to pollute. Her mouth is full of plagues, and the waters of the world are corrupted before her. (Auspice 1:17-18)

 

 

---

 

A FLASH OF WHITE, AND THEN DARKNESS. Aleksandr’s eyes pressed tightly together, before opening once more, to myriad colours flying past his eyes too fast for him to focus upon any select one. Reds, greens, oranges… black, brown, white. His hands splayed out. He was falling. The world flew past and around him, and the sky, or what he thought may have been the sky, turned to ground. Despite his scrabbling efforts otherwise, the Prince’s fingertips and boots only barely grazed a rough surface beside him, before he struck another, hard. His barely focussed eyes began to turn to dark once more as all the breath in his lungs forcefully escaped him. His brow set thoroughly at an oppressive pounding sensation in his head, following the impact.

 

He was only roused from his daze by a hot, searing feeling that began in his side but quickly spread through-out the entirety of his right side. Just barely, he could make out the sound of barking. No, shouted orders, and shrill voices. Who was shouting? He could not understand a word. 

 

When his eyes slowly fluttered open, in a half-lidded vacant stare, he could only barely make out vague shadowed shapes. He recognised those shapes though; he had seen such figures marching often in his homeland. The sharp edges of steel plate, the jingle of maille, the sound of an officer of some sort. The bright liveries upon their uniforms. He did not recognise them. One stood with a spear, something slowly dripping from its tip. Slowly, his vision returned to dark, and the last thing he could smell… sulfur.

 

It was dark again. Murky blacks and browns, and occasionally painted with a dull smatter of colour. Pale bursts of red, of orange, of green, dancing across his vision where otherwise there would have been nothing at all. Where was he? It was dark again, but he could not feel a thing. It was dark again.

 

His eyes slowly pressed open. He was roused by a number of sensations returning to him. Sound, the quiet rattling of wooden wheels upon dirt and cobbles, and the occasional clack of a loose stone coming free, unfamiliar voices murmuring all around him. Feeling. The air was stagnant, hanging low and seemingly clinging to him; it was a familiar weight that pressed down on him, and reminded him of home. He lay on his back, upon a wooden surface, with a shroud covering much of him. It was brown, or perhaps black. He could not tell, nor could he manage to move, beyond a great effort to turn his chin. 

 

He felt eyes watching.

 

When his head had turned, and his eyes next managed to drift open, he was met with the sight of a great stream of unfamiliar peoples parting about him and the cart he rested upon, marching about and past him in a seemingly never-ending trail. In the sky, painted a murky and hazy orange, loomed a great celestial body coursing a path. In its trail, the painterly colours of the sky were split cleanly, and a dark black void traced the path it had already cut. His eyes drifted shut.

 

 

---

 

HIS EYES SLOWLY OPENED, ROUSED AGAIN BY SOUNDS, BUT MET WITH AN UNFAMILIAR CEILING. Low pale white wooden beams supporting what seemed to be thatch, though he thought he may just barely catch the sight of a higher loft. Where was he? How long has it been? His mouth was dry. He was met with an oppressive sensation; one of unblinking eyes ever set upon him.

 

With great effort, he roused himself enough to plant his hands either side of him, and attempt to sit; such an effort was rewarded with that same searing feeling coursing through his body, and an alarmed cry from the other side of the dirt-floored room he lay within. His hands came down to his side, to find another coarse blanket strewn atop him, and bandages beneath those. How long had he been here, he wondered again? Again, a stream of unfamiliar words reached his ears, as he slowly looked back to the stranger whom was speaking hurriedly; they had abandoned whatever they had been stewing over a simple fireplace to leap to his side, and he realised he felt their hands gently grasping either of his shoulders and ushering him back down to lay upon the straw bed beneath him. 

 

His eyes trailed their surroundings again; it was a humble abode, though marked by many signs of an age-old trade, with strings of what looked to be herbs and flowers strung from simple wooden shelves, jars of varying squalid colours, and simple tools strewn across a bench. He thought he could make out some oddly shaped glass, and after a moment’s hard thought to break through the fog of his mind, he realised he had seen such sights before; his brother maintained a similar collection of equipment in storage, thought of much better quality than anything he saw here. 

 

His eyes drifted back to the face of the person who must have been treating him. A healing woman, it seemed. They bore gentle brown eyes and he felt the callousness of hard work upon their fingertips.They did not seem many years his senior, but they seemed tired; aged beyond their years by some stress or other. He wondered what they were saying to him, as they set him back upon a pillow and returned to their work. What had happened to her? He wondered. 

 

Through a simple window near-by the bedside, he could make out the same orange haze he had made out on the journey here, wherever that may have been. Far up in the sky, that same comet blazed ever-so slowly, edging gently towards what must have been a distant point on the land, or so the Bihar estimated dimly. So slow. His thoughts, juvenile, turned briefly to the races his good friend would host, but his thought was interrupted by a hoarse cough that racked his entire body. His hand crept down to his side once more, and a dull realisation crossed his mind. That searing pain, he had felt it before; struck by an arrow once, in defense of his homeland against the Daels. Someone must have stabbed him. What for? It must have missed anything vital, he surmised, for he still drew breath now.

 

 

---

 

THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED UNEVENTFULLY; OR WHAT HE ASSUMED TO BE DAYS. He found it difficult to tell. The haze of the sky permanently obscured both sun and moon, and the terrible glow of that comet cast a sickly light upon the world no matter what time it was. He was fed by the healer who had taken him in with simple broths, and his bandages were changed, though not before a generous lathering of some obscure green paste. His eyes averted that sight, whenever that time came. He dedicated his time in bed-rest to learning what few words he could make out, whenever she spoke. They were wholly unfamiliar and she seemed to be a woman of few words, and so it was a slow and hard-fought battle for understanding. Given time, a few phrases made themselves evident to him.

 

“You… rest…” 

 

“Comet… fire…”

 

“Quiet… men… searching…”

 

The healer had taken to lecturing him with such words whenever they returned from their forays beyond that simple wooden door; it felt to him that his world had shrunk to between those four walls, and such idle time often resulted in thoughts of his family, of his friends, and of his home. He had left them in such a dire time, and now he lazed about in a stranger’s home in a strange land. The throngs beyond the windows and upon the roads had slowly but surely emptied to a simple trickle of bodies; it must have been an exodus. These people were fleeing a calamity of their own. And he still felt those eyes watching him.

 

Such a feeling, and such thoughts, were shortly interrupted by the sounds of hoofs and the braying of horses beyond the walls and that small window. His eyes slowly turned over, at the sound of a beating fist upon the door. The gentle healer who had been nursing him appeared as if she had seen a ghost, her face pallid, as she slowly made way to the door, and was met by a collection of armoured men. He recognised those liveries. They must have been the men who wanted him. 

 

Numerous sets of eyes scanned over the interior of the hut, and unfamiliar words were shared once more, though tinged with what he guessed to be desperation. Once those eyes found him, words were no longer shared, however. A sword was drawn, and quickly the healer collapsed onto their back; a dark red line traced across their chest and stomach and blood began to pool where she lay. The retinue forced their way in, and his eyes widened in fear. He stumbled back, and in the process, tripped against the corner of the bed, landing in a messy heap upon the floor. His ashy blue eyes traced rapidly over the assorted armours and weapons present, before his gaze finally met that of the lead man, and he was met with… an expression similar to his own. Fear, desperation. It made sense. He was a stranger, after all, and it seemed they were in strange times.

 

 He saw a blade raising higher and higher. And then… darkness.

 

 

---

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

ROUSED AGAIN BY SOUNDS, BUT MET WITH A NOW FAMILIAR CEILING. Low pale white wooden beams. He knew where he was. His mouth was dry. The sound of a fireplace crackled quietly. His eyes widened, now, and he pressed himself hurriedly upright, fighting the waves of pain that shot through his body with the action. He was back in that bed once more, and he saw the orange haze of the sky; the comet languidly blazing its way across the sky. The healer rushed to his side, unharmed, and speaking in that tongue he did not know. He was struck by a severe sense of deja vu, and a sudden vertigo as he attempted to stand. Those eyes were watching him, again. Had they ever stopped?

 

The rest of that day was spent with pleas to stay and rest falling upon deaf ears, or so he surmised from the few words he had become familiar with. He found he could not sit still now, though, no matter the sincerity of the requests. He had seen what would happen if he remained, in long and excruciating detail, and so he was not to be deterred from his efforts to travel. He was dressed in simple peasants’ garb; a rough-hewn tunic, and a large linen cloak that managed to swaddle even the tall, thin Bihar in its depths. A brief thought crossed his mind, in amusement, that he surely did not cut any sort of proud or royal figure now. 

 

The young prince made an effort to show the woman his thanks, before he departed; he could not have shared any words of farewell that she could understand, but he still offered a polite, “Spasiba.” He did not linger, and found himself following his feet; that pressure upon his shoulders rested ever-present even as he lingered away from his home of Aevos, and he felt compelled to forge on. 

 

His surroundings slowly changed, from the unfamiliar, if common, sight of small villages and fallow fields to a forest, and the banks of a grand river that seemed to course and wind its way throughout the land, fed by many small creeks and tributaries. They all, seemingly, converged towards that destined impact point. He felt that same strange force drive him to march, and as he slowly trekked on through alien brush and alongside river and road both swarmed with unfamiliar figures, his mind turned to the Scrolls, and the tales of the Fourth Exalted. Did Sigismund feel the same, tracing that comet’s tail north to find the waters of Gamesh in the harsh elements? Such a thought gave him comfort, though he realised the similarities ended rather promptly there, for he would find no revelation from God at the end of his journey, nor was he one to bear such a grand fate. He signed the Hussariyan.

 

The throngs of those marching, he had come to realise as he walked opposite their grand exodus, were split in two paths. There were others who marched like him; those burned, and cut, and grievously injured. He had realised that he walked the path of the dead, who all chased that light in the sky as it made to touch the earth beneath them. The living were wise, and fled with all that they could carry. Calamity. Perhaps the Haeseni felt similar, when the old comet Lesanov struck the earth and destroyed their old capital; perhaps not. The smell of sulfur led Aleksandr to believe that natural disaster was not the only calamity at play in this stricken land. Such thought exercises were on numerous occasions interrupted by sudden urgent efforts to hide; often, by road-side ditches, under stumps, or in shallow dead waters of the tributaries. He thought he perhaps recognised one band of soldiers riding past; those who had cut him down, and his benefactor in this land. He wondered what fate would befall her now, that he had left. He hoped she would be unharmed. He felt the eyes watching.

 

Progress is slow, and progress is painful.

 

He felt eyes watching.

 

His surroundings were alien, and continued to be unfamiliar on his journey; he had abandoned the slowly but surely thinning hordes upon the roads to trek the wilderness, and he was surrounded by signs of unfamiliar life. Little creatures scurrying in the underbrush, great trunks that reached to the sky wrapped in sickly white, papery bark and adorned with razor-sharp pines that ranged from bloody crimsons to harvest oranges. At times, they almost blended into the hazy sky that loomed above oppressively. 

 

The rivers, he came to realise, had all become black and slow-flowing; poisonous ichor leaking from some foul distant peaks. They certainly were not God’s waters, he would muse. A sickly smell emanated from the waters, and his clothes were stained grey-black from the times he had to dip into them, but he continued to march on regardless. In the distance, he thought he could spy a keep mounted upon the edge of a snowy mountain range; his thoughts turned to his cousin, the Duke of Vidaus, and the great keep he ruled that similarly straddled the mountaintops. Granted… the castle he spied was not quite so grand in scale, nor conspicuous.

 

 

---

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

HE AVOIDED A SMALL RUINED TOWN AS HE FELT THE PRESENCE OF EYES AGAIN. Whose eyes were those? He had charted a course, slowly but surely, towards the mountains. He abandoned the riverside with pleasure, the smell having begun to turn his stomach, though he found he still could not escape that ever present smell of sulfur that swathed the entirety of the land. His march up the mountains was slow, and inexorable.. His simple shoes, granted to him by the healer in the cabin, had all but worn away; his tunic ripped by the plantlife, and his hands torn upon the sharp rocks that he had caught himself upon whilst climbing. 

 

He continued to climb, and climb, and climb. Occasionally, he would fall. Often, it was painful, and sometimes it was fatal. No matter how many times, he opened his eyes somewhere on the mountain, and continued to press on. He grew tired. He was reminded of the Mountain, that great unknowable behemoth that his father had pressed him to climb when he was just a boy. Perhaps it had equipped him with some measure of confidence as he slowly surmounted this one, and trudged along its snowy peaks. 

 

He thought of Tomasz’ words to him; “Be the Mountain.” To become the mountain. He spent a good measure of time dedicating thought to such a concept; what did it mean to become the mountain? To be solid and stalwart in the face of the elements? Unbudging before great suffering? He had seen much, but he did not think he was capable of such strength. He was no warrior.

 

He came to realise this mountain was not the same as the great colossus of Aevos. There were no gusting gales of winds to throw him to and fro at their mercy, nor was the chill piercing him to the very bone. Instead the pain of his inflamed gut and of his torn flesh was his companion on his journey, that sensation of eyes that haunted him wherever he walked, and the occasional updraft of rancid air that seemed to burn his nostrils when he took too deep a breath.

 

Was he even alive? Such a thought was not new to him, and had crossed his mind plenty as he pressed on across those lonely peaks. He did not see any other figures, and he had begun to lose track of how long he had spent travelling. He felt no great pangs of hunger, but still scrounged and scavenged for anything at all to eat. He felt a dull ache all over, but should he have not felt more? What had happened to his family in his absence, he wondered? Did they mourn him? Or were matters dire at home? Would his funeral have to wait until they contended with the calamity he had abandoned only to die to another in a distant land? Was Zofiya still soul-searching, and waiting to speak with her twin? Sigmar still contending with his doomed fate? Had Vasilia been recognised in his absence, or was she still fighting for her recognition? His mother, his father? How has Karl coped with the Crown so far? Had Andrei become the knight he dreamt of becoming?

 

Dead man’s ramblings, he decided, but his feet still lead him on. Eventually, the Oracle-born came upon an abandoned grand doorway on the side of the mountain. He could see above him that the comet was close now. He briefly thought that perhaps if he waited long enough, he might reach out and touch it himself. Instead, he pressed into the doors before him. Again, he remembered the old Mountain. That great, terrible titan. Perhaps Endurance found himself wandering into those doors long ago all the same; that poor spirit, trapped. He felt kindred. Or perhaps not. He still had duties he must return to. He had to.  

 

He felt eyes watching.

 

 

---

 

THE DOORS LED TO A DIMLY LIT CORRIDOR, DAMP AND OVERGROWN WITH MOSSES. Here, he finally had company again; dead milling about doorways in the labyrinthine tunnels he had found himself in. He avoided doors that hosted a great many of those injured, and he pressed on. His duty. He was exhausted. At the end of the tunnel network lay a small crack that seemed to radiate a gentle heat, and he gingerly climbed through. The dead must have led him, even though he did not understand them, nor could he thank them. 

 

He felt eyes watching.

 

He was in a new hallway, with an unfamiliar ceiling. It was different to the labyrinth he had crawled through. These halls were decked with colourful heraldry, banners, and trophies. He must have made it into that castle somehow. In the distance, he could piece together shrill orders, marching beats, and murmuring. Doubt and fear seemed to carry on the stuffy air in the keep. He pressed on, still. Through colourful and decorated halls, up tight stairwells and past rooms that reminded him of home, past unfamiliar sigils adorning the walls, until he finally emerged into a great hall atop the edge of a balcony. He guessed, from the size of the middling keep, that this was the centrepiece. He heard a cry arise from the halls behind him; he must have left a trail of his blood, or scuffed the furred rugs that lined the passages. A terrible shame. He pulled himself slowly onto the balustrade that ringed the high balcony, holding himself up by the crooks of his arms upon that railing. He was exhausted.

 

Through a grand window of stained glass on the opposite end of the hall, he could make out the silhouette of what he had chased all this time. The simple dais and throne that sat beneath that window was dwarfed by the grand celestial object that hung behind and above it. Any minute now, he was sure. Through the grand window, he was greeted by the sight of a grand basin that must have once hosted a prospering people. Great fields abandoned, red and white forests ablaze in myriad wildfires of black and white flames in competition, and that orange haze that seemed to radiate off the land itself. 

 

The feeling of eyes were upon him again, but he could not help but laugh. Of course. “They were my own. This whole time. Of course. Of course.” It made sense when he stopped to think about it. Didn’t it? The cries and stomping of boots grew louder behind him, as he slumped forward onto the railing, and then… tumbled over, exhausted. That was a familiar feeling; of colours flying past him in a blur. 

 

He opened his eyes under a familiar ceiling; the gale of winds beating upon the windows. He could barely make out the surprised call of a close relative, as he lay sprawled and barely conscious in an alchemical study. He recognised it. He was in the bowels of the royal household’s hunting residence, Zenorein. His hands numbly reached around his body. He was still swathed in his ragged wear, in bloodied bandages, but… he was alive. He was home. He heard the clatter of pottery falling to the ground, and a familiar voice calling out to him with fatherly concern. He really did wait.

 

“Aleksandr? Aleksandr!” 

 

He closed his eyes. He was home. No more watching.

[garentoft 9265]

Tomasz, who had been deeply worried about the absence of his close friend, immediately goes to tell him all about how he's planned their matching outfits for an upcoming masquerade. He did not relent on the matter, regardless of Aleksandr's protests and murmurings of that which he had witnessed.