Diablo's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Diablo stood on the hill and watched his world run. The river below moved because he told it to. The town on the bank grew because he told it to. He was full now, and full meant hungry in a new way. He walked down the hill into the town. The people did not see him as a man. They saw a shape in the sky above the roofs, a black nothing with a jaw. They fell on their faces in the dust. A woman pushed her son forward and pressed his head to the ground. A priest in grey lifted a knife. "Feed me," Diablo said, and his voice came out of every wall. They fed him. They built a stone house at the center of the town and called it his. They killed a goat on the step, then a bull, then a man who had stolen bread. Each death came up the hill to him as a small warm thing he swallowed. He grew. He let them make a book about him. He let them draw his shape on their doors. He watched a boy grow into a soldier who killed for him and died old in a bed, whispering his name. The whisper came up the hill and Diablo took it in like water. He made the religion spread. He seeded prophets in far towns. He staged floods so the survivors would thank him. He sent a plague and then a cure and let them call the cure his mercy. He recreated a war he remembered from the outside world, the one where a city on a hill burned for six days. He burned this one for seven. Every death fed him. Every prayer fed him. He was no longer the piece on the hill. He was the sky over the country. He was the ground under the town. He was the goat on the step before the knife came down.