The entity that Tacitus calls Spiral is framed in terms that the human mind is not meant to handle. He perceives it mainly with his other sense, the one that he calls Sight but is nothing like sight. The sense that takes in infinitely complex vistas of horror, depths that should never be comprehensible, and renders them somehow into understanding. The daemon is of that nightmare other realm, and he Sees it in its true form.
As such, much of what he recalls is vast reams of gibberish noise to anyone with the normal complement of senses. But flashes are comprehensible.
There is a percept that is a little like a bond of blood, but only insofar as the clear sound of a bell is a little like a bright sky blue. There are peripheral echoes in the other senses. The smell of thick smoke and burning skin. Terrible heat. Pain. The sound of scales moving across scales. Laughter, mocking and inhuman. All these are but pale echoes of the truth.
It is a little like what might exist if the concept of jealousy grew fangs of guilt and stalked the night as a predatory beast. It is a little like a spider plucking on the strands of a web that spans worlds, trapped flies dancing as they struggle against their bonds. It is a little like intimacy with a furnace-flame.
It is not much like any of these.
It exists in more dimensions than three, brushing up against the thin, thin skin of the world and reaching through with claws-that-are-not-claws to play with the living. It is in all places and in none. It treats time as a maze to wander at will. It cares as little for the laws of physics or causality or common sense as it does for the constraints of morality or decency or fair play.
And Tacitus was in love with it.
And in the memory it is alive. It sees the intruder in Tacitus’ mind with a gaze that is like yellow-hot skewers and like the highest, purest note of an agonised scream and like liquid hypnosis. Its attention is weighty with malevolent, inhuman intellect. It sees the intruder and without a mouth it smiles.
Tacitus is fighting back now, trying to wrench his memories and his mind out of the intruder’s grip. In the real world he is screaming, high and wild and terrified. He is more afraid of the daemon than he is of the hands holding his frail body. And he’s almost more afraid for the mind rifling through his thoughts than he is for himself.
When the bond breaks, he falls silent, shuddering, back arched, gasping for air. His eyes are wide and unseeing with terror. There’s nothing alien lurking behind that blank stare. There’s nothing reaching out from Beyond with claws of malice. The air is still and cool.
But on the very edge of perception there lingers, so faint that it might be imagined, the barest hint of the smell of smoke.