Creusus's Arc

Chapter 14 of 21

The seated man did not rise. He looked at Creusus the way a man looks at a tool he set down long ago. "No," he said. "You will not go back. Not as two." Creusus kept his hands up. "Then send us both. I have a bout on the card." "You have no card," the seated man said. "You have a borrowed life on a borrowed road. The pieces must come whole again. That is the only door out of this hall." He stood then, slow, and the linen on his knuckles matched Creusus's own. "I am Diablo. Not a name you were told at the docks. The name under the name. A thousand years I have sat here missing a piece of my body. You are that piece. Come home." Creusus shook his head once. "I am a man. I have my fists. That is all." "You are a hand I lost," Diablo said. "I will fold you back in. It will take longer than it took the knight, because you did not spend those years in the void being scoured. But I will enjoy every hour of the work. When it is done, you will not remember the post or the old man's linen. You will remember only me." He raised one wrapped hand. Creusus felt a pull start under his ribs, low and steady, like a rope drawn hand over hand through his chest. He set his feet. He threw a straight punch at Diablo's jaw. His fist stopped a hand's width from the face and hung there. The pull tightened. His knees bent without him bending them. He hummed, the same frequency that had broken the armor's hold, and the hum came out thin and wrong, as if the air in the hall would not carry it. He turned his head. The knight stood where he had stood, flame in one hand, sword in the other. The knight did not move. Creusus opened his mouth to call him and no sound came. The pull dragged a piece loose behind his sternum. He felt it slide toward the seated man like iron toward a lodestone. He drove his heel back into the stone to hold ground. The stone did not care. His wrapped fist trembled in the air, still a hand's width from Diablo's jaw, closer now by a finger, then two. Diablo smiled without moving his mouth. "Slower is better," he said. "I have the time." Creusus's vision narrowed to the linen on his own knuckles. He watched a thread of it fray and lift, drawn toward the seated man. He was still on his feet. He was still himself. But less of him, and the pull had not stopped.