GAZES
Written on October 24, 2024 (♏︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 24: Radiation Poisoning ("I never knew daylight could be so violent").
Dycedarg had been glad that his brother had died as he did–glad that the light that had taken him was sudden and clean. Even as he heard his new voice issuing its taunts, he had felt some relief that Zalbag seemed to depart so quickly from him, that he could envision at that moment that there was no place they might meet again save hell.
His new eyes had met Zalbag’s, and it had seemed to him that the beast had already taken his human understanding, that his vision could not apprehend the disgust that must be obvious in that parting glance. The fire itself and the light it gave both seemed cold, and Dycedarg knew–unbidden–that such coldness was a property of all light now.
He knew, even before departing Igros’ halls, that the sun would carry a different cast to it–that he should not feel its heat as men did again. He knew that all mortal gazes, dying or no, would have the same expression of animal docility that Zalbag's possessed.
These thoughts, however, were fleeting. Under the suns to come, he knew too that the greater part of him had weightier and more terrible matters it must consider.
BACK