Creusus's Arc

Chapter 31 of 43

Diablo knelt in the dirt, pinned by Thane's gravity. Creusus reached him at a full run and drove his fist into the demon's temple. The blow should have crushed bone. His knuckles passed through the head like a hand through smoke. He stumbled forward. Diablo laughed under the weight. "You cannot touch me, fool," Diablo said. "Not here. Not in this skin." Creusus struck again. Ribs. Jaw. The black wrappings on his hands hummed and gave him nothing back. Every punch found no purchase. Thane's face was gray with strain. The gravity was the only thing still holding. Then Diablo's eyes changed. Something behind them snapped. He stopped laughing. "Enough," he whispered. "I will give you a nightmare you cannot wake from." The village folded away. The bodies, the smoke, the watchtowers, all of it peeled off like wet paint. Creusus and Thane stood on black stone. Red light bled from tall windows above them. Spires rose on every side, carved with grim faces. A temple. Not a place. A mouth. At the far end of the hall, something rose out of the floor. A shape made of pure absence. It had the silhouette of a beast, a wide skull, a jaw hinged too far open. It was the size of a house. It began to slide toward them without feet. "Creusus," Thane said. His voice cracked. "I know this feeling. This is inside him." A seam split the air behind the void beast. A man stepped through it. Long hair, bone-colored gauntlets, a red sash. He was the twin of the body Diablo wore, but paler, sharper, alive in the eyes. Malachai. The real one. Pulled out of the corner of his own stolen mind by the tear in Diablo's control. "Hold the shape," Malachai said, flat as a stone. "I will slow it." He raised his hands. Chains of white light wrapped the void beast's throat. It thrashed. The temple shook. Then the nightmare found Creusus and Thane too. A woman walked out of the pillars, blood down her white shirt, smiling the way she had smiled in a garden. Kallista. Behind her, forty villagers with their throats open. Beside her, a middle-aged woman with black hair and red stains at her collar, Deborah, reaching for Malachai. Thane fell to one knee. Children in mage robes stepped from the dark toward him. Their small hands were empty. Their eyes asked why. "They are not real," Malachai called. "They are him."