Tahi-shei was waking up from his fourth or fifth move of the evening, and was blinking his eyes open as he looked around. His internal clock told him that the cave lights should have been bright by now, but he realized after a few moments that they were still dimmed.

That was odd.

He rose to his hooves, and then noticed with a sudden jolt, much like he'd been struck by lightning, that his vision was noticeably worse than it had been yesterday. He stumbled over to a pool of water, and his stomach sank. As he looked down, he realized that he could not see his reflection. He scraped his memory for any sign of what could have caused this. Poison, perhaps? Something he'd eaten?

The ability to see the fungus around him persisted. Perhaps that was why Tahi-shei had not noticed; with so many spores everywhere, it had probably been easier for his brain to fill in the gaps and prevent him from noticing the slow-but-steady loss of sight. He felt distinctly sick as pieces started to fall into line -- he'd been losing his sight for some time now, hadn't he? He'd noticed, in some ways, that he was noticing less -- being startled more by people he'd known for cycles coming up behind him, having more and more trouble seeing in low light, needing to turn his head to look at certain things. But he'd never thought about it.

Now he was realizing that maybe he should have.

See you soon, Mr. Deimos, echoed in his head like a gong. You will need to learn how to see through fungus, he had whispered, and Tahi-shei's ametrine heart didn't actually move but his pulse quickened. What a pleasure to see you again.

And then, when he'd gotten the Crown -- Do you see?

The bastard had been teasing him.

Tahi-shei narrowed his eyes and looked more or less in the direction of where he'd first met the Collector, hiding amongst the bones in the fortresses. "Sadist," he whispered, his voice low enough that Algol almost certainly wouldn't have heard him unless he had some kind of magical super hearing. "You were taunting me. Teasing me. Making me into a fool. And I didn't even notice."

He shook his head. So much for a crown befitting a king -- he'd been a fool to imagine the price he'd paid wouldn't have been enough for the Collector. It was made even worse by knowing he'd been lying about the costs.

/exit tahi-shei to go seethe