The Eyes of the Basilisk King

A long moment of stunned silence hung over the air. She counted at least eight jaws hanging slack around her.

“‘Of course?’” Mycelium asked. “As if anyone could have possibly guessed that’s why you’re here.”

“I know, but I’m quite vexed at the moment, so I don’t feel like being polite,” Nythana thought back.

“Why would you want to—” the Prime Minister started to speak, but Nythana cut him off.

“There’s no time to explain,” she said. “The king and the guards need healing immediately.”

“Prove that you can do it first,” he said.

“On someone beside the king?” Nythana asked with a dry, patronizing tone. “Spend all my magic on one of your guards while the king bleeds to death?”

“Prime Minister,” one of the guards said. “He’s losing too much blood.”

The Prime Minister gritted his teeth, a vein bulging on his temple, but he clicked his tongue and relented.

“Wise choice,” Nythana said.

She strode over to the Basilisk King and looked at his heavily damaged arm. The curses’ power exuded from the wound like sap dripping from a tree.

“It’s definitely a curse,” Nythana muttered.

“Horridly inefficient, isn’t it?” Mycelium asked. “One may even call it sloppy.”

“It wouldn’t need to be efficient to do all the damage it needs,” Nythana thought back.

“Against a human, that’s very true.”

She created dark magic energy from her life energy supply and cupped her hands around the king’s arm just past where the spell had split his arm in two. She shaped a spell circle between her hands from the dark magic energy and ran her hands down the length of his arm. As she moved her hand, the splitting wound was pressed back together and healed while the dark magic energy infesting the wound was absorbed into her skin. She moved her hands past his wrist and all of the way to where his hand had split between the ring and middle fingers.

The spell drained her life energy like a sieve despite that absorbing the curse gave her life energy back, but it was effective. His arm that had been bifurcated down the middle was a single complete limb now. She’d been a little worried about how much blood he’d lost, but now that the leakier of his wounds was closed, his body would be able to heal. One of the things that the human body would naturally consume life force for was supplementing blood production after massive blood loss, and with the Basilisk King’s abundant excess of life energy, his body wouldn’t hesitate to draw on it and mass produce plasma and blood cells.

That left the other cursed injury as the sole danger to his life. Then she would need to help them heal the cursed guards as well. But for them…

Nythana turned back and spotted Rayhona standing with her hand clutching her elbow.

“Rayhona,” she said. “Would you fetch my wand from my luggage?”

Rayhona glanced at the Prime Minister, who begrudgingly nodded, then she turned and left the throne room.

Nythana returned to the task at hand. The Basilisk King’s veil had been destroyed by the dark magic attack that cut open his face and arm, so he was covering his eyes with his hand. Unfortunately, that also meant he was covering the curse-infused wound as well.

“I can heal you, Your Majesty, but you need to move your hand.”

The Basilisk King didn’t respond, and frustration blossomed within her. The number of obstacles she was being forced to go through just to look into this man’s eyes was preposterous.

“Your Majesty,” she said shortly. “You need to Move. Your. Hand!”

She wrenched his hand away from his eyes, and there were gasps from around the room. She glanced up to see that everyone in the room had turned away immediately. Not that there was any reason for them to have looked away. The Basilisk King’s eyes were squeezed shut.

So much for a wife-killing monster, she thought, looking at the king again. He won’t even let me look him in the eyes. How could someone like this have gained such a ferocious reputation?”

“I guess we should never underestimate the power of rumors and propaganda,” Mycelium said. “You should heal his wound… actually, if you want to get him to look at you, I recommend sticking your thumb in your mouth, cupping your hands around his eyes for safety and touching his face with the wet thumb.”

Nythana’s eye twitched at the off-beat plan Mycelium had presented.

“Then again,” she thought. “I’d certainly open my eyes if someone pressed something wet to my face without warning.”

“I’ll neutralize the curse now, Your Majesty.”

She bit back her trepidation and wet her thumb in her mouth. Then, cupping her hands around his eyes so nobody could catch a lethal glance from his peripherals, she touched her thumb to his cheek just below the cut.

His eyes flew open the moment the moment her cool, wet skin touched his, and their eyes met.

As soon as they made eye contact, Nythana felt an excruciating throb within her head as though she had been hit squarely in the brain with a paddle. She jerked her head away from him as her vision blurred and dizziness washed over her.

“By the Goddess’ raiment,” Mycelium’s voice swore from somewhere in her swaying head. “What in the world sort of curse is that? It just attacked us with a quarter-century’s worth of life energy all at once.”

Is that why my head hurts? Nythana thought.

She blinked away the blurriness and looked at the Basilisk King again. He had covered his eyes with his hands again, and she saw tension in his arm, neck, and jaw muscles.

“I think he’s waiting for you to fall dead on top of him,” Mycelium said.

I suppose that makes sense.

“My apologies, Your Majesty,” Nythana said.

He flinched at the sound of her voice.

“You’ll need to move your hands so I can finish neutralizing the curse.”

He slowly moved his fingers and looked her in the eyes again. She waited for the pounding pain to strike her, but it didn’t come. Instead, she felt a steady stream of unseen dark magic flowing into her through their linked eyes. She’d never expected the process to be so painless and invigorating.

Now that she wasn’t being assaulted by mind-shattering pain, she could see what his eyes actually looked like. She’d expected eyes that could channel enough dark magic to topple armies to be something terrifying. She’d been prepared to see eyes much like those of the cosmic horror she saw the day she stared into the gates of Hell and was dragged back into her own lifeless body. But instead…

“B-bedazzling,” she murmured. “Like opalescent topaz.”

The Basilisk King’s unusual vertical-slit pupils dilated as his eyes widened. His eyes flicked back and forth between both of hers.

“Lady Nythana?”

Upon hearing Rayhona’s voice, the Basilisk King squeezed his eyes shut again. Nythana looked over to Rayhona, who stood staring with wide eyes, Nythana’s wand in her hands.

“Were you just… looking His Majesty in the eyes?” Rayhona asked.

Several of the guards looked over in shock, despite that it may have put their lives at risk.

“Yes, I was,” Nythana said. “I did say that was what I came to Basileus to do, did I not?”

“The curse that kills any living thing isn’t working on her?” one of the guards asked in a loud whisper.

To Nythana's astonishment, Rayhona hit the ground on one knee with her head bowed.

“Your Royal Highness,” she said.

“Huh?” Nythana thought. “Wasn’t that all a ruse to bring in citizens?”

“Perhaps not,” Mycelium suggested.

“I thought the search for a Queen was an act,” she said aloud.

“We will deal with that later,” the Prime Minister said. “There are more urgent matters at the moment.”

The Basilisk King winced, and Nythana remembered that he was currently in danger of being killed by a curse.

“Ah, the curse,” she said. “Hold still, Your Majesty.”

Since he wasn’t blocking half of the cut with his fingers anymore, she was free to properly remove the curse. She conjured part of the dark magic siphon that drew dark magic energy towards her, and she gingerly touched her fingers to the wound. The dark magic energy constituting the curse coagulated beneath her fingertips and was absorbed into her skin.

“The curse is gone,” she said. “Stay still while I close the wound.”

She channeled her dark magic and created the field for a healing spell. The circle formed in half a second, and the wound was gone within five seconds after that.

She wiped a bit of blood from the king's cheek and nodded to herself. Things had taken an unexpected turn, but she’d confirmed that the Basilisk King’s eyes truly were a potent source of dark magic. Now all she needed to do was find a way to keep them from sentencing her to be executed for using dark magic.