Dan felt sick.
His stomach flipped as he tried desperately to keep his voice unwavering while the older cultists unlatched his eversight assists. The moment they slid off his eyes, he felt a weight crash down on his eyelids. They were heavy. So much heavier than he ever remembered. Dan wanted nothing more than to pinch his eyes closed and let them rest for the first time in months.
But he couldn’t.
Dan wasn’t sure if it was the fear of anger and disappointment in his superiors, the flesh of his lids forgetting how to close, or simply the beauty of the Great Iris above, but his eyes wouldn’t close. Not even as they ached so tragically.
It was finally time. The ceremony to sacrifice his eyelids was finally here. And he wasn’t alone. He was as far from alone as he’d ever been all his life.
Tens… maybe even hundreds of thousands of acolytes all kneeled in rows. All ready to lose the skin around their eyes. Down near the centre, where the lens of the Observatory seemed to concentrate light towards a raised platform, a hundred upper creeds kneeled much the same as he did. Except they would be sacrificing something far more valuable.
This was the greatest congregation of power Dan had ever seen. Arasthis-Val’Boor himself was here. Dan had seen him surrounded by the Apostles as he’d been led in, but they’d already been long into their worship and paid neither him nor any other cultist so much as a glance. Their gaze was for the Great Iris alone. As had Dan’s from the moment he kneeled.
The Observatory had been nothing less than overwhelming. From the moment he’d stepped inside this holy ground, he’d felt the weight of presence from above. It was suffocating. The gaze pressed down on him with such pressure it felt like his soul was being crushed.
Between the sensation and the way the Observatory warped and enlarged the Great Iris’ visage, Dan was given the impression that he was an ant in a glass bowl. He was the curiosity being looked down upon.
A scream ripped through the massive crowd, and Dan’s head snapped towards the source. It came from the entrance, right by the stairs that still left his legs aching.
“Back to your devotion!” Val’Yuela, his direct senior snapped. “Ignore all distractions. They are but a test given by the great See-er of All to measure your worth. The ceremony will not end.”
Uncertainty flooded Dan’s body as the screams did not vanish. They grew louder. One dying voice was replaced by another every moment. Whatever was coming, it was getting closer.
“Raise your knives,” a voice boomed over the amassed acolytes. The steadiness and strength of his voice was enough to settle many of Dan’s neighbours.
Not Dan though.
He raised the small curved blade with practised ease. With a thousand rehearsals behind him, Dan could have done this part in his sleep. It was what came next that worried him. He was downright dreading the moment he had to slice through his eyelids in tune with the ritual, and the screams did nothing to settle his conflicted heart. Or the stomach that was ready to hurl its contents.
Good thing he hadn’t eaten today.
A hush washed over the crowd. Even the higher creeds’ hymns fell to a low hum. There wasn’t a single member of the Cult of the Everseeing Eye that missed it.
The Great Iris spun faster. Their ceremony was working.
At once, the entire crowd launched back into their words of worship with greater devotion. A fervour that faltered only an instant later.
The laugh pierced his chest and sent his skin crawling. An eerie sound of a thousand discordant voices giggling in his ear sent terror through both Dan, and all those around him. Fear captured his attention away from The Eye. He vaguely registered the elder cultists screaming to continue the hymn — to lift their blades to their eyes — but their voices were already lost to the acolytes. For who could focus on anything but the wall of shadows crawling over the ledge of the Observatory all around them? Who but the most devoted could ignore the terror of what they all knew had come for them.
The Nightmare.
Dan hadn’t believed the rumours of how horrifying the entity was. How could he? He knew The Nightmare’s identity. He knew the girl behind it. But… looking upon the swarm of shadows reaching out and swallowing hordes of cultists, the flicker of bodies in the dark falling to waves of blood, and the dying wails that underpinned it all, Dan couldn’t fathom it.
How was this thing a person? Even if Nyxalrai had admitted to killing Solan, and had hinted at doing something during this very ceremony, it was hard to picture that scrawny girl from his ward ever being something so terrifying as The Nightmare.
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But as much as Dan lied to himself, his Feat made sure he couldn’t ignore the truth.
This was Nyxalrai.
…or whatever her name was now. It had been a while since he’d seen her. Given her earlier growth — and how active the rumours made her seem — he expected another evolution. Dan shook his head at the thought. Anyone else, and he would have thought two months an impossibly short time between evolutions, especially ones so high. But this was her.
Dan was knocked from his thoughts — and his kneeling position — by his neighbour. The other boy had fallen over himself in a panic. And Dan just happened to be in his path of retreat.
The boy wasn’t the only one. All around him, Dan noticed acolytes and cultists alike scrambling to get as much space from the encroaching black mar on their Observatory as they could. They weren’t fighters. But even amongst those that were, the harbingers, there were very few willing to stand around to face the horrific deaths everyone knew came at the hands of The Nightmare.
Another tripped over Dan. With how many people were crowded in, they were at risk of being trampled.
“Return to your assignments!” a voice thundered, staggering the stampede with the power of his voice alone. “Look around you; our god is descending. Do not be fooled by the envious tribulations sent by the lesser gods. Take your place in this grand ceremony once again, and join us in our common goal. Be a part of something greater than yourself. Do your part, and the Great Iris will deign us with its intimacy and grant us all its blessing.”
Dan’s eyes flickered to the speaker. A pillar of unshakeable will amongst a sea of terror. It was the cult leader. Arasthis-Val’Boor. The man hadn’t lowered his head from the stars above, yet as he waved his hand over the edge of the Observatory, Dan felt forced to look.
Beyond the glass, the world was a blank of white. For a moment, that was all he saw. Then his eyes adjusted to the intense light, and he realised the accretion storm had grown violent. Far worse than even earlier that day. Blades of solar wind sliced through massive glass shards that had been wedged in the framework for who knew how many millennia.
He watched it sever, then disappear out of sight. Seconds later, a tremor shook the ground beneath his feet with an intensity he hadn’t felt since before he’d learnt of Solan’s death.
The burning rays of the storm no longer fell in a downfall. They whipped back and forth, shredding through space in a turbulent, chaotic expression of divine might. Dan couldn’t see Coral’s surface, but he could only imagine it was being scored clear.
“My Brothers and Sisters, this is the moment we have been waiting an eternity for,” Arasthis-Val’Boor announced. “Do not fear the darkness, for the light of the Great Iris shall protect you. Do not fear death, for the Eye will show you a greater world. A Nightmare is nothing to those who see.” He breathed in, his pause naturally pulling all minds away from the terror that had never stopped slicing through their numbers. “Harbingers, fend off that which covets. Give your Siblings the time they need to bring about the most glorious of days.”
Dan had never heard such inspirational words. If he had been a harbinger himself, he might have very well leapt on Nyxalrai’s rapier just to slow her a second. Instead, he settled down, feeling his own fears — and those of the men and women around him — wash away as if they were nothing but a bad dream.
His eyes found the infinite expanse of stars again. His hands lifted the knife. His tongue and lips rang with the words of devotion so intimately ingrained in him that he sang them in his sleep. It didn’t matter if Nyxalrai was here to show her jealousy over the Great Iris. This was his true calling. Dan was a part of something more now.
All he needed to do, was show his devotion.
All he needed to do, was cut off his eyelids.
Dan’s hand wavered as he brought the blade up to his left eye. The curved edge glistened under his god’s light. It was beautifully sharp. Now, he just needed to stop it from shaking, and he’d be ready.
The sound of defiant roars faded to screams once more, but Dan ignored everything but his god and his task. His upper eyelid was held stretched between thumb and finger. The blade shivered as it pressed against the base of his skin. Blood trickled down his fingers and blurred his sight. All Dan needed was a single, fluid motion. A jerk upwards and it would be gone.
A deserving sacrifice to the Great Iris.
This was the moment. This was what he’d rehearsed. This was where he was supposed to slice off his eyelids and be welcomed into the Cult of the Everseeing Eye for life. It was time.
…but he couldn’t do it.
Dan’s fingers wouldn’t move, his hand wouldn’t pull, and the tears running down his cheeks wouldn’t stop.
He screamed. There was no other choice than to go through with this, regardless of his foolish reservations about sacrifice. Dan needed to get into a cult. As dangerous as they were, it was a thousand times more dangerous without. There was no life worth living without one. He didn’t want to be scrounging through the alleys looking for rodents to chew on because his social position was lower than those very rats.
This wasn’t a choice. As much as he didn’t want to sacrifice his eyelids, there was no life for him if he didn’t. He screamed again, and forced his arm to move.
Only for something to grasp his arm.
Dan didn’t notice at first. He was too enthralled in the sudden soul-piercing feeling of being seen that he thought he’d succeeded and caught the attention of the god above. But that wasn’t right. He could still feel the weight of the Great Iris, and whatever was looking upon his soul now was piercing through it with a far more surgical accuracy.
Finally, his eyes adjusted from the swirling sea of stars and watched a tentacle scoop the blade out of his fingers and pull back past a hand clutching his own. He almost skipped past the hand, but had to double-take. That wasn’t skin. Those weren’t human joints. This close, it looked like a strange combination of a doll’s hand and a crustacean.
“Sorry Dan. Can’t let you do that.” The eerie whisper in his ear sent shivers down his back. “Not until I’ve proven to you that joining this cult — any cult — is a horrible decision.”
Slowly, Dan turned to Nyxalrai. His breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of her through the sudden darkness that swirled around them like a storm.
Her eyes. Each held a galaxy of its own. The resemblance to the god above was striking.
But she had five.