Chapter 12: Staring at the Sun
Eytan dropped into the tree's roots. "Ixia? Your Majesty? Where are you?"
He was greeted by one of her other aides. "Eytan! How did you get back?"
"I snuck off while that wretched blind mage was asleep," he spat. "The queen! Where is the queen, Marina?"
"Eytan, I'm very worried about the queen," she said softly, taking his arm and leading him to the periscope.
Eytan peered through the hole and immediately recoiled. "MY EYES!" he howled, covering his face with his hands and rubbing his eyes and forehead vigorously.
Marina grabbed his hands and yanked them away from his face. "Stop! You'll only put yourself into more pain - oh..."
Eytan's eyes were a horrid sight. While the iris had become a piercing pale blue, it seemed like every vein in the sclera had burst, turning the whites of his eyes red. He lowered his head and put his hands to his face again, shaking with sudden and uncontrollable tears of agony. Marina screamed and screamed as bloody tears streamed down his face, leaving long red streaks from the terrible eyes.
Eytan hiccuped. "Marina, I can't see... all I can see is the future... the moon... Marina, where are you? Oh, the pain..." The tears continued to stream down his cheeks as he felt the air.
Marina grabbed his hands, her voice shuddering with tears of her own. "I'm here. I'm here." She pulled him close, sobbing. The front of her robe became stained with blood and her tears soaked Eytan's pure white hair. "Eytan, I'm here, you're safe. Please, just hold on until a healer gets here."
"Marina..." Eytan gulped. "You don't understand. I see nothing and yet everything. I can see only the vast emptiness of what is beyond and the end of all things..." He let out an agonized cry as the tears continued to flow. His cheeks were completely red and the air smelled of blood.
After what seemed like an eternity of agony and wailing, two healers with a stretcher were finally at their side. They pried the wailing aides apart, laid the now-unconscious Eytan on the stretcher, and began high-tailing it to the medical quarters, followed by a tearful Marina.
Outside, underneath the blue pillar, stood Ixia.
She was staring directly at the new sun, the pale blue one, the large and unnatural usurper that was eclipsing Terraria's yellow sun. Streams of blood ran down her cheeks, except it was not blood but a pale blue fluid, one that had replaced the natural colors of the iris and sclera of her eyes. She was surrounded by hundreds of unnatural, extraterrestrial creatures who were never meant to walk Terraria's soil.
She was laughing. The blue fluid coursed down her cheeks and dripped onto her robes as the blue sun blazed and the pillar sent out monstrous visions, and all the while Ixia, crazed and blinded, laughed maniacally as she stared into the sun.
