Creusus's Arc

Chapter 38 of 43

Kallista fell asleep again in the grass. Creusus laid her down on his folded pack and stood. He needed to know where they were. The shore stretched empty in both directions. No ships. No smoke. No road behind them. He hummed low in his chest and felt no answering pull from the wrappings on his hands. The dark inside him was quiet. That was new too. He walked the treeline first, then a rise of grass above it. From the top he saw hills, a river, and past that a valley with no village in it. The sky was the wrong blue. Two moons hung pale against it, one small and one smaller. He had never seen two moons. He went back down to Kallista and sat beside her and waited for her to wake so they could go together. They walked inland when she woke. She did not ask why the sky was strange. She held his hand and named plants she knew and pointed at plants she did not. A hawk crossed above them with four wings. Kallista laughed at it like a child at a puppet. Creusus did not laugh. Every step took him further from any map he had ever known. They came over a low ridge and he saw a man face down in the grass. Creusus stopped Kallista with his arm. He knew the shape of the shoulders. He knew the black hair. He walked closer and turned the man over with his foot. Malachai. The face was thinner than before. The skeletal armor was gone. He wore plain cloth. In his arms he held a woman with her head against his chest, unconscious, breathing. Deborah. Creusus had never met her, but he had seen her inside the nightmare, reaching, dying in Malachai's hands. Malachai's eyes opened. He looked at Creusus and did not move to fight. He looked at the sky, at the two moons, and his face broke. "We did it," he said. "We broke free. I'm home." Creusus set his feet. His wrappings stayed cold. "This was his world," Malachai said. "The orb. All of it. Every piece of him made a country, a hill, a river. He held it together. When you pulled us out, the pieces stopped being him. They became this again. He is gone."