As Reun walked, mathematical equations and complex diagrams swam before his eyes. It was hard enough for him to be pulled away from his work to eat, so this week long "break" would be unbearable.
Reun was a ship designer, although he worked with something much more complicated. He designed airships. His creations could carry dozens of tons of cargo through the sky. The Council had benefited greatly from his employment. He was constantly making revisions and alterations to his designs. In his eyes, all of his work could be improved.
He had been ordered to get some fresh air for a while. His atrophied muscles already ached from the few miles he had traversed. The setting sun was far too bright for eyes that were used to dim candlelight. He was only allowed a few changes of clothes, an ornate dagger that was more for show than defense, and a bulging coin purse jingling at his belt. Trees crushed in on Reun from both sides of the road. Unfamiliar chirping and skittering blended together with the sound of his panting breath. A scout was fixed on his face. Eventually the forest opened up. The overgrown dirt path abruptly shifted to ancient cobblestones. A murky lake was wreathed by Tudor houses. Reun had arrived at Westlake. Common folk bustled around the town, even at this hour. The sun was just beginning to dip below the tree line, bathing the world in crimson light. He certainly looked out-of-place in his pompous clothing. The hours of travel had seemed to suck the energy from his bones.
He navigated through the crowded streets to a tavern. The wooden building was sandwiched between two other establishments. Reun entered the tavern through a weathered door that sagged on its hinges. The lower floor had several tables with townsfolk drunkenly laughing and drinking. The pungent sent of alcohol filled his nostrils as soon as he entered. He held his chin high as he waded through the crowd to the counter with the owner lounging behind it.
He glanced up at Reun and a flash of interest crossed his face before returning to a sullen, disinterested glare. "Not from town, I'm assuming," the tavern owner commented, "A night's stay is two silver coins." Without a word, Reun fished out a single gold coin and slapped it on the sticky counter in exchange for the key.
He painfully ascended the roughly-hewn steps. Reun found the room with a number matching the one on his key and opened the door. The stench was the first thing that hit him. The smell of sour meat and mold wafted into the dim hall. The room contained a small bed, a decrepit chest of drawers, and a fur rug that seemed to be responsible for the noxious odor. The mattress was tantalizingly close, but something compelled him to look through he drawers. The first three were empty other than the abandoned homes of arachnids.
The fourth was not the same. It contained a large glass hug full of an amber liquid. He pulled it out for further examination. Floating in the liquid was a fist-sized eye. The cloudy pupil took a shape similar to an X. The faint sent of burnt hair, that hadn't been there before, was detectable under the other odors. He first thought that this item must have been a fake. This theory was disproved when he found several muscles, veins, and a chord of nerves coming out of the back of the eye seemed to be ripped. The sphere was far too perfect to be man made. His mid desperately tried to fabricate a logical solution of what this organ could be from. The organ was impossibly large. It just couldn't belong to a normal beast.
His exhaustion evaporated and was replaced with horror. A wave of existential dread crashed over him, washing away all sense of normality with it. The eye couldn't be real, it just couldn't. His brain created countless, horrifying aberrations as possibilities for the eye's owner. Reun took several shaky breaths. There had to be a logical answer. A strange eye preserved in alcohol couldn't be that big. His mind wouldn't let him accept that a creature like that could exist. Well, he couldn't until he saw the pupil dilate.
...
