Eyes in the Dark

Two eyes staring emberlike through the dark. Two eyes, staring hatred at my soul.

This was the awakened face of malice, the face of all dark dreams made manifest in the world - given power by whichever twisted mind forged this wretched plane of existence in the eons past when gods forged worlds from the very essence of their imaginations. All the dark emotions that people detest in themselves granted power; power to reduce the object of our emnity to ash, power to twist the land into a barren hellscape. The very air here had been changed into a black miasmic cloud that burned metal, clothes and exposed flesh with equal vigor.

Magic in this place fed off these things, encouraged them, shaped itself around them. And of all the hopeless, desolate worlds left as a relic to the whimsy of some long dead god, this was by far the most despairing. One more world and people simply waiting to die.

Two eyes staring spite into the world. I watch as my companion, my friend of many years, is blasted to ash which swirls about the cavern chamber by the torchlight - extinguishing it. The world hates me now, it takes joy in those two eyes and in bending itself to satisfying that which lurks behind them. And looking into those eyes, I know there is no such painless death of ash awaiting me. These eyes want me to suffer, they want to see it.

In such a world as this, life is brutal and short. The people here bathe in the power the land offers them and die on the twin edged sword of their own magic. Yet even in a place that rewarded the worst thoughts and feelings with fantastic power - this creature stood alone; the very embodiment of the spirit of the god forsaken world. Consequently the people here worshipped it as a god.

Consequently when they found I possessed magic beyond the taint of this place, they asked me to kill it. I'd been confident, and yet here I stood, all the years striding the worlds and stars counted for nothing in the face of such raw unbridled fury given form.

Two eyes staring in the dark. A low moan pierces the dark, rising steadily through a shriek and wail into a howling rage like thunder. The eyes grow brighter, and in the light of their gaze I can see the very cave being blasted away by the very sound. So much dust in the howling wind, carried off into the night, biting at my skin.

All my charms and wards are as nothing. Spells fail, I open my mouth and caustic dust pours in, choking and burning away all words. I choke on hubris, and a lifetime of wanderings pass before my eyes.

Two eyes in the dark, blazing like the infernal flames of hell itself. They rise into the air, growing larger, growing closer, growing fiercer. Everything around me is wind and dust in the firelight.

There are two eyes in the dark and I am alone in the world.

The end, I think, is very near.