Unsleeping Patron - Beneath the Cosmic Eye

Barely wide enough for his shoulders, the cleft between two slate slabs kept for his shoulders, but it kept the damp draft off his neck. Silas sat with his boots pulled up against his thighs, his chin resting on his coat collar. In his inner pocket, the silk pouch of Asharto horn powder pressed against his ribs like a heavy, cold stone.Beside his left knee, the Blood-Lantern rested on the gravel. Its iron-and-bone frame emitted a low, crimson warmth that expanded two paces into the gloom, turning the grey fog into a swirling pink haze.At midnight, the air in the cleft died completely.The low hum of the lantern’s cold flame cut off. Silas opened his eyes. The crimson light didn’t fade; it flared upward, jumping six inches through the top of the bone chimney. The iron reservoir at its base began to rattle against the shale floor, chattering like teeth in an icy draft.Overhead, the sky tore open.It wasn’t a sound of thunder. It sounded like a thick, water-soaked sail ripping down the middle under a gale. The Miasma above the hollow didn’t drift away; it was pulled upward into a roaring, invisible funnel, revealing the black void behind the fog.Silas leaned his head back against the slate wall, his hand dropping to his scythe-dagger.Suspended three hundred yards above the shale hills was an eye.It filled the entire gap in the mist, thirty yards across at its widest point. The outer sclera was the dull, bruised yellow of old tallow, webbed with thick, black arteries that wriggled like fat earthworms beneath a thin membrane. The arteries didn’t terminate at the edge of the globe; they stretched out into the void, pinning themselves into invisible points in the darkness like guy-wires holding up a tent pole.The central iris wasn’t colored. It was an opening, a sheer drop into a well that swallowed the starlight around it.Silas couldn’t move his tongue. His jaw was locked tight, his teeth grinding together as a terrible, heavy pressure settled over the basin.Through the clear air beneath the giant sphere, faint blue sparks began to rise from the surrounding hills. They drifted out of the rocks, out of the frozen gullies, and out of the grey dirt pale, ghost-like shapes the size of human fists, pulsing with a weak, watery light. They were souls, or what remained of things that had died in the fog days or centuries before.The black well in the center of the sky opened slightly wider.The blue sparks accelerated, shooting upward into the void like dust drawn into a chimney.Then the suction hit the cleft.Silas’s torso jerked upward. He didn’t rise from the shale his boots remained planted in the gravel but the grey, translucent shadow of his shoulders snapped three inches out of his skin, drawn toward the yellow eye above.A sensation like hooks dragging through his spine tore through his neck. The necrotic rot in his belly erupted, a cold, sour liquid surging into his mouth.The Blood-Lantern shrieked.A dome of dense, bloody light exploded from the iron frame, forming a six-foot red shell over Silas and the cleft. The moment the crimson aegis took form, the black blood pooling in the lantern’s dish began to boil, bubbling off into thick, dark smoke that smelled of wet copper.More, the cold voice inside the bone handle demanded, vibrating through Silas’s knuckles. Fuel.The black grease in the dish was disappearing at an impossible rate. Two seconds. Three seconds. The crimson dome shuddered, the red light thinning until the yellow glare from the sky bled through the edges.The suction yanked at Silas again. His shadow-soul was ripped half out of his ribcage, his vision turning completely white as his physical heart stuttered and stopped.Silas dragged his left arm across his chest, pulled his scythe-dagger from his belt, and drove the rusty scythe-point deep into his own left forearm.He didn’t feel the blade enter. The cold in his nerves was too deep for pain.Black, curdled blood welled from the slit in his meat. Silas shoved his bleeding wrist over the lantern’s bone chimney, letting the thick, necrotic discharge spill straight into the brass dish below.Sizzle.The Blood-Lantern roared, its crimson light flaring into a deep, arterial red. The dome stabilized, pushing the cosmic pull back six inches.His soul slammed back into his physical ribs like a lead weight dropped from a roof. Silas doubled over, his forehead slamming into the shale between his feet. He couldn’t lift his arm. His left wrist remained wedged over the iron dish, his blood dripping steadily onto the cold metal, feeding the lamp as his pulse slowed to a faint, erratic flutter in his neck.Overhead, the giant globe turned slowly.It didn’t look down at Silas. A creature that size didn’t look at ants in shale crevices. It drifted eastward, dragging its black, cable-like veins through the void, its central well continuing to sweep the surrounding hills clean of blue sparks.Five minutes passed. Or five hours. Silas lost the track of time as his vision narrowed to a pinprick of crimson light hovering above the gravel.When the tear in the sky finally closed, the Miasma rolled back into the basin, thick, cold, and quiet.The Blood-Lantern’s dome collapsed, its flame settling back into a faint, ember-like glow inside the bone frame.Silas lay on his side in the dirt. His left wrist was caked in dried, black crust, the cut sealed by the cold. He couldn’t feel his fingers. His chest moved once every ten seconds, a shallow, rattling gasp that brought no warmth to his limbs.He dragged his right hand through the dust, his fingers hooking weakly around the iron ring of the lantern. He pulled it against his chest, turned his face into the sharp, bitter scent of the black horn powder in his coat, and let the darkness take him.