Eyes Like Night

173 hours and 14 minutes. I only bother with the cascade of time because I fear I am losing myself. Arithmetic at a metronome may keep my mind from plunging into madness. Or it will propel the fall. Lost in the cold, insanity might be a blessing. So I walk on, searching. The plains of ice taunt my soul with the illusion of infinity and blister my soles below.

I can't help but meditate on the past as I march through the desiccated ruins of the world. Centuries ago this must have been a city, long before I was even the breath of an idea. Then they came. They started by blacking our eyes to mark us, make us different from them. No one knew if it was a virus or a forced mutation, but I know I see through eyes darkened like the blackest night. They waged a war of philosophy against us first. Killing our gods merely by existing, killing our morality with their cruelty, and pacifying us with their strength.

A lone wall, the weathered corpse of an ancient home stands before me now. Is this it? The marker? It's odd to find anything not shattered. Huuth the Elder is rarely wrong so I begin my combing of the area.

Strange that we were so sure those from the sky would be some exotic vision of our imaginations. Tentacled beasts or ray gun toting greylings. What a surprise it was to see them descend from their crafts with two normal looking arms and matching legs. Many believed they were our ancestors who took to the skies long ago, only returning to claim their lost lands. They were quick to inform us otherwise.

My hands brush over something metal. The thin but well designed hairs at the base of my palms picking up any inconsistency in the texture beneath. A chain, silver or platinum and thin as twine. I pull a blade and begin to chisel it free. After a few short minutes I have it. It's exactly as Huuth told me it would be. On the end of the chain hangs a small locket shaped into a heart. There is no clear way to open it but my own heart races knowing there must be a way.

We thought winning the war would be the end. It was only a cruel beginning. We embraced our alterations and became the monsters they had proscribed us to be. We did it to survive. To win our world back we destroyed it. Through the lens of retrospection most atrocities are avoidable. But how can one judge the desperate sins of our ancestors? Faced with annihilation the boldest of us would climb a mountain just to spit in the face of god. I know this mountain well. So did he. The one who saved us.

I hide the locket in a secure pocket on my chest. I look up to find the sun above. It's light no longer strong enough to give life but at least it can still guide me. I walk north towards the coming sunset. Huuth was sure that if I found the locket I could find The Forge. When he first found the book that led him here he had become too ill to proceed.

“My greatest regret.” he would often mumble through liquor soaked breath. Fatigue claws at me but I have no time to stop. I am too close now.

Most of the stories of the past focus on the destruction and violence of the war. They are fearful tales meant to instill caution so we are not once again fooled by sky sent visitors. But some are of him. His name lost to time, his deeds carved into eternity. He was a scientist and despised the war. Some stories laud his courage. Some chastise his brashness. All have the same end. He brought the cold. He killed the world.

The ice below me cracks slightly. Barely audible, a low rumble catches my attention. Less the sound, more the vibrations running from my feet and into my knees. I barely have time to pivot and leap before the beast bursts from the ground below. We call them Naga. Mutated beasts the enemy cursed our world with before they left. The Naga have serpentine muscular bodies with iron-hard scales that tear through the hard soil and ice below. Spread flat they are the length of two men but they are rarely seen that way. They were clearly once part of our species, a head just like my own rests upon a barrel chest with four shoulder joints. From these sockets sprout arms with several more joints throughout. These arms have no hands but instead dagger like appendages used for digging, crawling, and killing. They use these multi jointed arms to create a drill-like point above their heads that can chew tunnels in the hardest of materials. I have unfortunately also seen what they can do to flesh. The sight haunts my nightmares.

I wonder if this creature has some identity. Does it know we share pieces of our genetics? I don't have long to ponder as it's coiled body shoots toward me. I drop to my back on instinct and slam a heel hard into the ice. Three climbing claws extend below my toes and I lift my leg to rake the exposed flesh above me. The hard carbon of my claws grinds across the scales and I am sure they will break until I am jerked into a backflip. One of the claws broke the surface and dug into the softer flesh beneath. Blue fluid that might be blood splashes my face and the chill of it is so surprising that I almost laugh at the absurdity of the fact. No time for that either. A bladed arm swings towards me and I draw my cane from it's sheath along my leg. It's the last clan weapon left over from the war. I am able to parry the blow with it, but the impact spins me. My leg screams in pain as it twists, foot still caught in the creature. I detach and fall to the ground with a roll. My knee is surely damaged but I don't have a moment to worry about that.

I run my fingers along the grooves carved into the cane and find the point I want. I run a fingernail across the tiny mark and the tip begins to glow. I can feel the heat on my face from the tiny reactor inside the tip. Excited electrons turned loose by fusion and fighting to be free of their cage. The creature notes it as well. White eyes bouncing between the cane and my own black eyes curiously. Naga may be in the family tree but they do not retain our intelligence. The creature bursts forward and I flick one more small notch on the cane. An invisible, atom size hole appears at the top of the cane and I suddenly become the most powerful creature in the universe. The infinite mass of enraged electrons pour out of the cane with the force of a rocket engine. The Naga’s organic material is released from it's molecular parts and becomes a blur of atoms.

“We are but the seed of a new world.” my mother says with the cadence of a prophet. Her eyes dig into my bored grin. I have heard this before. It’s our clan’s creed. Written in the book found by Huuth and made canon to us all. “Be strong or be swallowed by the long night to come.” I squirm, adolescent energy and ignorance is always hard to quash and I am bursting with both. “You will be the one, my son. I fear no one strong enough will come after you.” she says with a sadness in her brow. Even now I know she is right. It is not that no one strong enough will come after me. It's that there is no one else to take my clan’s quest unless I find a mate in the wastes. My mother is the youngest female in the clan and she is no longer of childbearing age. She continues to speak but I fade. My face feels colder than it should and I lean back. An ache creeps down my right arm and pulsates in the center of my palm.

My eyes open and the sky is pitch dark. I must have been out for half the night. My hand is caked in black char. I hold it up and the cold wind calms the pain. With some effort I am able to sit up. I shudder as I take in the immense destruction before me. The weapon left a perfectly clean half circle of emptiness along the ground as far as the eye can see. Everything within turned to atoms by the force of the reaction. At least my training paid off, clearly I held the weapon level and true. I could never have imagined it was this powerful. What a terrifying thing these must have been in the war. Though I also understand why many were killed themselves when using them. I can only thank the centuries of evolution and enhancements to my body for my survival, though my hand is basically useless at this point.

I find myself walking along the crest of the newly created ravine. My black eyes are trained for the night and easily spot the half buried footprints of my old path but they spot something else as well. A hole, half revealed by the blast. It is large enough for me to fit through and descends straight into the planet. Ladder rungs adhered to one side. Every single cell in my body quivers with the collective expectation of my entire species. This has to be it. The Forge.

I descend slowly. My hand aches still but my suspense nulls it. For centuries my tribe had foolishly been looking for the hatch on the surface. Of course it was covered by the ice. All things are covered by the ice. I find a simple door far below. It swings open easily. Fear a thing of the past, I let myself fall into the room. The ground is hard but I am able to roll the impact away. Even my black eyes cannot make anything out in this perfect darkness. Except for a small golden light ahead. My chest grows warm. I pull the locket free and find it also glowing. The light is just enough to make my way. I step forward until I can see a heart shaped groove in some kind of metal. With no hesitation I place the locket in it's hollowed home. Intricate seams appear in the metal and like the insect cocoons of the deep caves, the metal folds in on itself and the light intensifies. Then where once there was void, a body appears, slightly transparent and shimmering as if made of light. It looks like me, but incorrect. For the first time in my life, I am sure I am seeing the ancient enemy. Their eyes are mostly white with intersecting blue and black circles like I've never seen. Transfixed, I can focus on nothing else.

“There are no words to make right what I have done.” The shimmering form speaks but makes no eye contact. This must be some recorded message. “However, If you are seeing this, know that you have started The Forge. This world will heal from the atrocious sickness I created. You did not deserve this but I feared it was the only way to free you from us. My kind was not always like this. We called ourselves humanity, but I know we are in fact calamity.”

I feel my planet inhale. It breathes its first breath in ages. Humans were our end, but one of them might be a part of a new beginning. A better beginning.