The Eyes in the Crack

This story was inspired by Patricia McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Another of those fantasy classics I never picked up until my thirties.

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The Great Wizard Gelleg was not the greatest wizard in the world— but nor could it be said that there were any greater than him. He had rivals and peers, but no superiors.

And at the peak of power, well…

Most are content.

Oh, once every century or two some mad conqueror would rise to power, someone who could not tolerate sharing the peak, but by and large, it was enough for even the most ambitious to not have to look up. And Gelleg was more content than most, for his will to power had always come from fear— fear of being used, fear of being controlled, fear of being crushed by those mightier than him.

Other great wizards meddled in politics, built magical realms in pocket universes, or patrolled the edges of the universe for unwanted visitors from the Vile Basement or the Seething Attic.

Others carefully tended to the stars affixed to the dome at the edge of the universe, carefully feeding the arcane bonfires that the superstitious considered suns like the one that orbited the world. They held great parliaments, out there in the dark, to discuss the placement of the stars, the formations they would be aligned in— though seldom could those Constellational Congresses find enough agreement for any changes to be made.

Still, it kept them all busy.

Gelleg had no interest in politics, no interest in the constellations that kept order in the universe. No, he resided happily in his tower, pursuing the study of magic.

He spent a few decades studying folk magic, little spells to clean cottages or tune fiddles. He spent a half century pursuing illusion magic— not the mind-warping illusions of the Dreameaters, not the fear-devouring illusions of the Merciless Eye, but simple projections of light and color, all for the sake of art.

Gelleg was, for the first time in his centuries of life, simply enjoying magic for its own sake. When his defenses were mighty enough to simply ignore assault by Krikrirkrik the Great Locust for a year and a day, until the demon was forced to retreat back up the Seething Attic out of sheer exhaustion, well… there was little inventive for Gelleg to pursue further power.

Gelleg, after all, was not a particularly good nor bad man. He would be repulsed if one had proposed that he torture his enemies to death or force the villagers near him to deliver him a new virgin every night— but at the same time, he would be baffled if one proposed that he start a crusade against slavery, or to seek more rights for peasants.

Odds were that not much would have changed, if Gelleg was left to his own devices.

And then came one of those occasional conquerors— one who did not merely seek freedom from rule, and demand respect from those weaker than him, but commanded all bow to him.

And a shocking number of wizards did bow to Venynev the Spiteful.

Venynev was an old, ancient wizard indeed. But for all his dozens of masteries— pyromancy, onieromancy, lactomancy, cryomancy, demon binding, fate-twisting… any wizard at the peak of power could simply hunker down behind their defenses and ignore him. He was, in truth, more powerful than any other wizard alive, but it didn’t raise him above anyone else.

For an average mortal, destruction is easier than creation, attack easier than defense.

For a wizard, the reverse is true, because wizardry is the opposite of natural law. And once you reach the peak, there is no single wizard, no matter how much more powerful than another, who can breach another’s defenses alone. Oh, when many wizards join together, they are with great effort able to overcome that— but that is a rare event indeed, for wizards are harder to shepherd than cats.

And for millennia, Venynev had seethed in wrath, unable to enforce his will on others.

Until he turned away from the universe. Turned away from natural law and wizardry alike. Sought power from farther away than even the demons of the Vile Basement or the Seething Attic.

He began delving into the cracks in the dome of the universe, began seeking ways to survive Primordial Chaos beyond.

And he succeeded. Found… something, bound something. Some being of blind eyes and deaf ears, which perceived nothing.

And understood that nothing.

And could control that Nothing.

A half-dozen wizards were simply wiped from existence, before the rest bent the knee.

But Gelleg’s old fear, his old refusal to be ruled, reared its ugly head, and he joined those who resisted.

It was a great battle, but in the end, the rebels triumphed, cast down Venynev. Those who had bent their knee by and large failed to show up to the battle, for while they feared Venynev’s blind servant, they held no loyalty.

And while Gelleg wasn’t key to the battle, he did save the lives of several allies with his magic. Not with his defenses, not with his great magics— but with his simple illusions of light, for Venynev never even stopped to consider that someone would use such weak magic against him.

Once the battle was done, and the blind creature’s remnants banished back to the Primordial Chaos, Gelleg returned to his tower.

But he was not content returning to his magical amusements.

No— for he was afraid once more.

What, after all, was to stop another great wizard from delving through the cracks, from seizing power over Gelleg once more?

And Gelleg could not allow that.

So he began to scheme.

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He was not the only wizard to have such thoughts, of course— most every other wizard had such.

And in the first month after Venynev’s defeat, more than a dozen wizards vanished into the cracks. A handful of them eventually returned, poisoned and dying from Chaos, but most were simply gone.

Gelleg was afraid, and determined to seize power of his own, that he might not fear another ever again, but he was less overproud than many of his peers. Where they dove headfirst through the cracks in the dome into Chaos, Gelleg sat down with books. Not secret tomes, not great mystical grimoires, but simple, basic books for apprentices into dimensionology.

Oh, he knew plenty on the topic already, for no one could reach the peak of wizardry without deep cosmological insights, but in his long-ago rush to prevent anyone from having power over him, he had skipped over much of the basics, and a great deal of the intermediate levels. And, if there was one thing he had learned from pursuing folk magic and illusions, it was to not rush, to not build without proper foundations.

Outside his tower, the Constellational Congress set strict limits on Chaos studies, organized cautious expeditions, promised to freely share any found knowledge. And, again and again, their plans devolved into infighting, their expeditions resulted in lost lives. Demons from both the Vile Basement and the Seething Attic who once gladly accepted contracts from any wizards stopped responding to summons, fearing being sent out into Chaos.

Even the peasants became aware that something consumed the attention of the wizards. What, they knew not, which was probably for the best.

Gelleg paid only enough attention to all this to make sure no one else had succeeded.

Long years he studied, years that turned into decades. He mastered dimensionology, polished up his cosmology, sought mastery over growing pocket universes. Within a century and a half, he had no masters in those fields, only peers.

And none of it offered him any certainty of success.

Oh, he was hopeful about his plans to build a Chaos ship, a vessel made from a dozen sewn-together pocket universes to allow him to travel deeper into the Chaos than any since Venynev, but it was not a sure thing. If he were caught in one of the unpredictable emergence storms of the Chaos, he doubted his vessel could survive.

So he studied deeper. Studied fate magic, chance magic, and even weather magic, seeking to predict the storms— only to learn that they were not unpredictable because he lacked the methods. They were unpredictable because attempting to predict them changed the outcomes.

Still, his studies bore some fruit, and he was able to refine the navigational spells of his design to increase his odds of escaping an emergence storm.

But it was still not certain.

So Gelleg changed his approach.

He began to study again, began pursuing new magics from the bottom up. He studied scrying, summoning, and demonology, all for a singular pursuit— instead of delving into the Chaos, he would call its inhabitants to him. He lost track of time, let the decades slip through his fingers like sand.

Quite ironically, it was not from the established great magics that he found the key to his pursuits. It was from his own studies in folk magic.

It had, at this point, been centuries since Venynev’s fall. Other would-be conquerers had risen in that time, and all had been overthrown far more easily. Gelleg might have been an immortal wizard, might have loved the pursuit of magic more than any vice of the flesh, but he was still human, could still grow dispirited and tired.

In his depression, he found himself listless, wandering about his tower, surrounded only by his elemental servitors. He couldn’t make himself dive back into his studies, no matter how he willed it.

And instead, he found himself browsing his old journals. His first from after reaching the peak of power, in fact.

The journals where he had pursued folk magic.

And in them, staring him right in the face, he found his answer, found the perfect spell to work as a foundation for his project.

A simple folk-spell for calling fish, but one that would never summon anything too dangerous for the fisherman. One that reached out with not an ounce more magic than necessary— for even the most delicate of touches against chaos was a danger.

With a little work, it would serve his plan ideally. It was too dangerous to risk sending unshielded

It took only three years, practically a blink of the eye, to adapt it into his plan.

And it brought him certainty. It would work, he knew it.

But by then, it was too late. By then, the Constellational Congresses had forbidden further delves into Chaos, delves into the cracks. They had dubbed it a fruitless effort, and had carefully protected every existing crack.

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Gelleg could have likely found his way past the defenses on the cracks with time, but not without alerting the other wizards to his actions— and even the greatest of wizardly defenses could fall in the face of sufficiently motivated foes.

But Gelleg was patient.

Gelleg resumed his studies once more.

Not of wardbreaking, not of stealth magic— but of history. Of the strangest errata of the arcane.

Of the origin of the universe.

Not too directly, of course— whichever god had built their little universe deeply valued its privacy, and as gods never cared much for their universes once built, most wizards were not fool enough to attract its attention directly, and those that did tended to simply stop existing.

There was still a good bit known, of course. Gelleg hoped to find some other route to the Chaos, perhaps in a forgotten corner of the Vile Basement or the Seething Attic.

Instead, he followed a route of study he did not expect, inspired by a single line in the most basic book of universal history for the newest apprentices.

Just a quiet, throwaway line that mentioned how much of what was known of the function of universes came from the study of broken shards of fallen universes that had drifted in through the cracks.

Gelleg found his answer hidden right in plain sight.

And so he set out hunting one of those broken fragments of another universe.

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Gelleg fully expected to spend another century pursuing his new goal, to have to master a half-dozen new schools of magic. He expected he would have to wait until Venynev was a half-forgotten footnote in history, vaguely remembered by those few wizards who hadn’t simply forgotten with the passage of centuries, or put themselves into a slumber of millennia out of boredom.

It took him a month and a half to find a broken chunk of universe. He just had to follow a series of footnotes and citations throughout his library, before finding that there was a chunk of broken universe held by a mid-sized museum on the moon, one frequented by the children of the great immortal wizards on school trips.

Of course, on arrival he found it in none of the exhibits, found it missing from the specimen index. But it wasn’t stolen, wasn’t a matter of some grand conspiracy— it had just been forgotten in a sub-basement due to a clerical error.

It had just been sitting there in a crate, a nondescript flat rock, the size of a cabinet with a handful of cracks in it.

No one even noticed it was gone, when Gelleg stole it.

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Gelleg hid the shard carefully, when he returned to his tower. Oh, he doubted anyone was watching him— he had not been the most social of wizards even before Venynev, and he doubted many remembered him well these days, as reclusive as he had been these centuries pursuing his goal.

He felt a brief pang of loneliness at that, but easily pushed past the feeling.

It was deeply unlikely any of the most skilled seers amongst the great wizards would waste their time on his tower— but just in case they did, he didn’t wrap the shard in cunning magics, for that would attract their curiosity. He didn’t hide it in layers of lead, neutronium, and the incuriosity of the worst sort of bullying teachers; for that sort of impenetrable defense would just attract greed and covetousness.

No, Gelleg hid the shard in plain sight.

He just replaced one of the stones of his tower with the shard, a stone that had needed replacement anyhow. Just put it directly into the wall, with no added magics beyond a few basic architectural and structural spells. That, and one of his mundane light-bending illusions to make the shard look like the stone around it, so weak even he struggled to tell the illusion was there.

And on the ground floor of his tower, he finally began casting his fishing spell into the cracks in the shard, cracks that still led into Chaos— no matter the fact that the shard’s birth universe was dead, nor that the shard was contained within an entirely different universe.

And things began to respond to his call.

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Most of what slipped out of the Chaos and through the cracks in response to his fishing spell was… well, useless. He found a few pebbles from dead universes, like his shard. He found several Chaos-creatures, but they were weak, pathetic little things that evaporated on exposure to the order of the universe. He found minerals that had never existed, plants that grew the wrong way through time, and puzzlingly, a trout. Just a regular, mundane trout.

Well, odd things happened in Chaos.

After an hour of useless returns, he decided to make a change to the spell— to relax the definition of what posed a risk to him a little. Just a little— he intended to go slowly with this. He hadn’t expected to acquire a Chaos beast like Venynev’s right away, so this was all within expectations.

On the first cast, something new happened.

Eyes appeared in one of the cracks.

They weren’t particularly impressive eyes, honestly. There were just two of them, hanging golden in the blackness of the crack. They were small, with slitted pupils, and they watched him with only the occasional blink.

But they refused to come all the way through the crack, even on a second and third casting of the fishing spell. They brought through fossilized ball lighting and a Chaos bee that flew off to start pollinating dream flowers, but the eyes were unaffected.

Gelleg, nervous, tried spells of summoning and banishment, but none had the slightest effect on the eyes.

So Gelleg tried again, relaxing the definition of safety on the fishing spell once more.

And again.

He brought through steadily more toxic chunks of solid Chaos. Brought through thinking winds that drove away all wisdom in their path, crystals that were only valuable to those that didn’t want them, and tiny people crewed by tinier sentient ships.

And he brought through a Chaos beast that was almost the end of him. No, it was specifically His End, Gelleg’s End, A Cruel Fate for Gelleg Made Manifest Only to Gelleg.

There, in the living room, he did battle with the End, did battle with his Death.

And defeated it, of course— his immortality wasn’t so frail as all that, and he had mastered who-knew how many magics over his centuries of following Venynev’s footsteps.

Still, that silent, motionless battle had been exhausting.

And the golden eyes hadn’t once moved, had just watched him the whole time.

So Gelleg tried again, and again.

And the eyes kept watching.

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He didn’t just rely on the fishing spell to try and lure out the eyes, of course— he made ever more daring diagnostic tests, reached out with ever-more esoteric magics to try and understand the thing.

But the eyes were completely unresponsive to his scrying, as though they weren’t even there.

At last, after a particularly trying battle with a Chaos beast— some sort of sapient dream that forced him to struggle with his repressed childhood memories while it tried to forcibly convert him into a sentient symphony— Gelleg collapsed onto a comfortable old arm chair, then just stared at the cracks. Stared at the eyes floating in the void in one of them.

And the eyes in the void stared back.

“Why won’t you move?” Gelleg asked. “Why won’t you respond?”

The eyes just blinked at him again.

Gelleg stared back.

And, eventually, as one does while sitting in a comfortable arm chair after a difficult day, Gelleg fell asleep.

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Gelleg woke to horrifying devouring sounds, and instantly felt fear.

He opened his eyes, looked straight upon the crack— and discovered that the eyes were gone.

And his fear only grew.

The crunching and gnawing noises continued, rising up to him from ground level.

He felt no pain— and could not help but wonder what the eyes were eating, in a sort of horrified fascination. His memories? His magic? His soul itself?

Gelleg could not say he was fond of any of the options.

Finally, he forced himself to look down at the ground, down at the floor by his chair.

And there, a few feet away from him, a small black kitten was doing its best to devour the trout that had come through the cracks during his first attempts.

“Huh,” Gelleg said.

He looked back up at the ancient shard of a dead universe’s shell, and realized something about himself.

He was honestly terrible at masonry. The master of a dozen disciplines of magic, he might be, but he couldn’t join and seal a stone block to save his life.

The crack the eyes had lurked in wasn’t a crack in the ancient shard, but a crack between that shard and the rest of his wall.

The eyes hadn’t belonged to a creature come in from Chaos, but to a hungry kitten, too scared to enter fully into his tower.

“Huh,” Gelleg said again, and looked back down at the kitten.

For all the kitten’s best efforts, it wasn’t able to eat more than a fraction of the trout— and its best efforts were relentless indeed, for a creature so small.

At last, though, its stomach filled, it staggered away from the trout, half-asleep.

It tried to run away when Gelleg reached down and snagged it, but it was too full to do more than complain when he scooped it up.

“You,” he said to the kitten, “need a bath.”

The kitten had some quite unprintable responses to that— both due to the horrid language a young kitten can learn on the street, and due to the fact that meows are terribly difficult to transcribe into letters— but Gelleg just chuckled and carried it off to find a wash basin.

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It would make for a more satisfying tale if Gelleg stopped pursuing the Chaos due to the kitten’s charms. Oh, he stopped fishing in the Chaos, and he raised the kitten and tended to it for a good long life— but the cat wasn’t the reason he stopped delving the Chaos.

No, it was the fear he had felt on waking up. The realization that he was playing with risks he barely understood, with threats he couldn’t truly comprehend.

And Gelleg took a long look around him, and realized how carefully the other great wizards had sealed off the cracks in their own universe’s shell, and was content to store the shard of the dead universe’s shell beneath his own tower, just in case another wizard managed to breach the universe. Gelleg, after all, cared more about not being ruled than he did about ruling.

He was wrong about one thing, though.

Which crack the eyes had lurked in. Which crack the cat had crawled through.

It hadn’t crawled through in the crack between the stone and his wall, but through one of the cracks into Chaos.

It didn’t really matter, though.

Chaos is where all cats come from, after all.