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"Fascinating," Micolash says, a looking glass in one hand, a pair of pincers holding a pinkish-red fleshy pulp in the other.
A man was found dead on the balcony near the gaols. A pool of blood, its crimson already darkening to black, had spread around his body in the shape of a collapsing star. Horror, raw and pure, had carved itself into his wide, unblinking eyes.
Discovered too late and blamed on a stray beast. There was little to be gleaned from the corpse; a bunch of carrion crows had already feasted on it by the time the hunters arrived.
"Come, have a look," the scholar urges, nodding at a metal tray on the small table, and Damian moves from the doorway into the room, guided by his voice as he always is.
Two more men fell in the span of the following weeks in the very same spot. Enough blood to stain the pavement so deeply that no rain would be able to wash it away.
Should word spread, the townsfolk might start whispering of a cutthroat. Or of a curse brought on by those university bookworms. Yahar'gul has been theirs for merely a couple of months, their grasp on it still paper-thin, the presence of their black mantles in the streets merely tolerated. Should the locals come to believe them responsible, they might drive the scholars out of their narrow little world, and they would have to flee, tails between their legs, back under Laurence's wing. Or even to the dusty halls of Byrgenwerth.
The latest body — now in the mortuary and blinded by Micolash's own hand — was still fresh when found. An onlooker claimed he'd seen a queer flash o' light, all blue an' violet, and when he dared a peek round the corner, he saw the man drop dead like a pile of bones.
The witness, of course, was taken in as well. As a matter of prudence.
"What do you make of it?" Micolash asks as Damian carefully takes a piece of soft flesh from the tray. A slight quirk of his lip suggests he already has thoughts on the matter.
The corpse's eyes were carefully removed, the optic nerves severed with surgeon's precision. Each was then peeled layer by layer, like the skin of a fruit, until the delicate inner surface was exposed. The retinas were submerged in alum, the solution fixing whatever final impression might have been burned into them at the moment of death. And, like fruit, they were harvested once retinas were ripe-ready to yield whatever secrets they held.
An optogram. The term surfaces from a half-forgotten paper he read months ago.
One of those once-eyes now rests between the pincers, awaiting his scrutiny, while its twin remains in Micolash's hand.
Damian looks. The blot-like stain that takes up most of the retina stares back at him from the depths of the dead man's dead eye. A headache begins to stir behind his own.
"Macular degeneration?" he proposes, blinking the sensation away. He gets a scoff in response and mirrors it with one of his own. "I know what you want me to say, but we need to rule out the mundane first."
"It's identical in both eyes." Micolash replies with a hint of impatience in his voice. "And the pattern itself... If anything, it looks like a spider." The last word drops both bitter and reverent. Damian wonders if he dreams of spiders still; they disappeared from his dreams when he left the old university behind.
Damian regards the eye again. An inkblot in his mind transforms into a body and several long appendages of uneven length.
"I suppose it does," he says and puts it back on the tray.
Micolash clicks his tongue at his lack of reaction before returning to the eye again, studying it with an intensity that could burn the image into his own retina. The room is dark and cramped; a faint metallic scent makes it feel even tighter, and the dim glow of an oil lamp does little to push back the shadows. The silence stretching between them breaks when Micolash suddenly snaps his head up and turns to meet his gaze.
"I want to go there myself."
"To the spot where three men died?"
"Would you rather I sent some unsuspecting stranger in my stead?" A sly smile splits his face in half, and Damian's thoughts, too, split between a yes and a no. Micolash spares him the need to answer. "It's the only sensible course. This guessing game might never end if we don't see for ourselves. Besides, I would not be so reckless as to throw myself blindly into potential danger. We merely observe from a distance."
"We?"
"I was hoping you'd want to join."
He doesn't, not until the hunters have done their own investigation and deemed the area secure, but he already knows he'd agree to anyway. Still, he lets out a heavy exhale. "You don't really need my permission."
"I know," he smiles and swiftly exits the room. Damian follows suit.
It is a balcony like many others throughout Yahar'gul. A worn-down balustrade, a poorly kept flowerbed with a couple of gnarled trees, leafless at this time of year, and a dark brown stain near one of its edges. The wind is cold, but mild; the balcony is blissfully empty. Damian thinks he can map the corner of the opposing building to a faint line that marked the imprint's middle, but there is certainly nothing on the blank brick wall to account for the spider-inkblot-star.
Micolash takes a step forward, but Damian catches him by the sleeve before he can go any further.
"That's close enough."
The scholar glances down at his hand as though surprised to find it there.
"My, the hunters should certainly learn a thing or two about caution from you," he murmurs, amused, before slipping free from Damian's grasp and stepping forward nonetheless. Permissions, right, he said it himself.
He pauses by the balustrade, scanning the pavement, the dry grass, the stained stone, the blank stretch of the wall, as though expecting something to shift under his gaze if only he looked long enough. He touches the dried blood on the ground, then leans over the railing, peering down at the street below. For a moment he stands utterly still, listening as much as looking.
The soles of his shoes stand directly in the middle of the blood stain.
Damian, too, stills, though his posture is that of a hound on guard, ready to strike at the first sign of danger.
When Micolash finally straightens, there is a flicker of frustration in his expression, subtle, yet Damian has long learnt to read his face to notice it.
"Nothing," he says slowly, as though puzzled.
"If it was something obvious, the hunters would've found it already," Damian replies. "Maybe they already did."
"Or maybe it's conditional. We need to go through the victims' belongings, or return here at nightfall, or maybe…" Micolash trails off. The irritation in his voice barely conceals the disappointment beneath it. For Damian, relief outweighs the disappointment, and he lets his shoulders relax. "Great Ones, if only we had one more—"
It starts behind his back, above his head and slightly to the left. A ripple in the air he fails to catch in time.
The distortion— something vast, he can tell, something large enough to bend the space itself around its form— moves towards them. The air rings like a carillon of bells no larger than pearl beads. Damian reacts first, shoving Micolash aside, and the impact sends them both stumbling to the ground in a tangled fall. The air swirls in a spiral of blue and purple, tiny white pinpricks of stars bleed through the vortex.
The outline of something arm-like closes around empty space where they stood moments before.
Beneath him, Micolash's smile is wide and feverish, his breath fast and shallow in his chest. Damian can feel his heart running wildly beneath his palm, and it matches his own if only in rhythm, not in nature.
Somewhere amidst the fear a spark of anger comes to life. Micolash talked of caution and distance, and yet the exhilaration in his eyes now makes Damian wonder whether he ever intended to keep that promise at all.
Micolash breaks eye contact first and looks up. Reflected in his eyes, Damian watches the sparks fade and the air still above their heads.
"Do you see it?"