Unseen

I strolled through the busy streets of some city; it didn’t matter which one. I had walked through thousands, watched them rise and fall. Civilizations were born and died before my eyes. What did it matter what they called the place? The name would change a dozen times before it inevitably fell like so many others. And I would live on, waiting for the next.

Blood, dry and flaking, crusted my right hand. A lukewarm bottle of amber liquor dangled from my left. I raised it to my lips, the burn a familiar companion; my only companion.

The eyes of people on the sidewalk slid past me, through me. They always did. For hundreds of thousands of years, every eye had turned away. Even the gods. Even death.

I let a large, muscled man slam into my shoulder, not bothering to step aside like everyone else. He looked around, angry, searching for someone to blame. I didn’t stop. He’d move on to whatever duty or burden had driven him into the crowded streets under the stifling heat.

Maybe that was the worst part of the curse. Not being Unseen, but the endless nothingness.

I drank again, letting the liquor blur the thoughts clawing at me. Today I would sink into it. Tomorrow I would scrape myself together and carry on, like always.

I had left the body of the monster I’d slain in the parking lot of some store, another unseen creature the humans would never know was gone.

I angled for the entrance of an expensive hotel, intending to drink my way through the mini fridge and pass out in a comfortable bed. A black and white spotted cat narrowed its eyes at me as I neared; even a curse laid by a god couldn’t dull the perception of cats. They were the only creatures that could see the Unseen; they saw everything through those unnatural eyes.

It was hit or miss with the spiritual creatures; they either loved or hated me with very little in between. Humans had always known, or at least suspected, that cats were more than they seemed, and this age was no different. Humans had forgotten so much, yet some things still lingered.

Even though the gods had vowed to stay out of the mortal realm, their stories and names lingered. They still had worshipers despite their absence. The humans knew, in the recesses of blood and shared memory. The history of the “ancient” beings was still studied and debated through the lens of academics and mythology.

I scoffed. Myth and history? If only the gods were just stories. I had met them, served them, and paid for it.

The cat didn’t hiss, so I scratched its ears and slipped into the hotel lobby behind a woman in a cream pantsuit and impossibly high heels. Her heels clacked across marble as I bypassed the desk and searched for the cleaning staff.

The night of hunting, the liquor, and the heat pressed in on me. I was nearly ready to curl up under the lobby chairs and sleep on the stone floor.

It took half a dozen floors to find the cart sitting in the hall, indicating a nearby room was being cleaned. A pair of tidy, bustling housekeepers emerged from a door across from me, and I quickly slipped in before the door shut.

The room smelled of furniture polish and fresh linen, and was blissfully cool on my liquor-flushed skin. By the time I reached the bed, I had shed clothes and weapons, slipped naked between the starched sheets, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

…

I woke to screaming, the taste of blood and ash thick in my throat. A dream, the memories clawing back again, though I relived them enough awake.

My head throbbed, punishing me for yesterday’s drinking. The building shook, and screams echoed from the street outside.

I threw aside the curtains. The city below had become a warzone.

Cars burned, black smoke curling into a haze of dust and rubble. People ran, cowered in doorways, or huddled behind shattered walls. At the end of the block, a beast roared and crushed a car under a massive clawed foreleg.

Massive and hunched, it was built for four legs but rose on hind legs, destroying with those powerful arms. It was the largest monster I’d seen since the Gods War.

I dressed and armed myself in minutes, sprinting toward the chaos.

I wondered for the hundredth time what the humans must think was tearing their city apart.

The monster saw me coming and roared, bloody saliva dripping from its fangs. I wasted no time with bravado and charged, blade cutting deep into one arm as I ducked the other.

Training older than empires carried me. I leapt from a crumbling wall, dagger driving into its throat, the blade punching through muscle and cartilage to lodge in the spine on the other side.

It was a killing blow, but too slow. Claws raked down my back as the monster died, tearing screams from my throat. I stumbled free of its falling bulk and collapsed on the pavement.

A woman’s pale, dirty face hovered above me; brown eyes wide, cheeks streaked with blood and tears.

“It’s okay. Don’t move now. I won’t let you die.” Her voice trembled beneath the confidence she tried to force.

The words of the god I had rejected rang in my ears:

“Hear me, Rianai.

By my hand, you are cast into exile.

No throne shall claim you, no hearth shall welcome you.

You shall walk the mortal realm Unseen and unloved, a shade.

Eyes shall turn aside,

and even death shall deny you rest.

So shall it be, until the gods have fallen

and the heavens are broken.”

Her words pushed through the echo.

“What kind of person runs around with swords killing…” She glanced at the monster’s corpse. “Whatever that is?” She said softly, more to herself than to me.

She looked at me, searching my face, meeting my eyes. Not through me. Not past me.

My throat scraped raw, unused to words.

“You can see me?”