Page 54 of Sightwitch
My stomach hollowed out. My mouth went dry, but against all reason or logic, I pushed into a scamper after him.
He took one loping step for each of my three. Soon enough, though, I and my torchlight caught up. He was planted before a marble pedestal, on which a hilt rested, almost as long as my forearm but with only a jagged fragment of steel to jut above the cross-guard.
And beside the broken blade was a square frame with a long handle. It reminded me of a reading glass used to magnify small text, except that this frame was larger and most of its glass had been shattered and lost.
Before I could stop Captain, his fingers had curled around the glass’s handle. He was lifting it high. I grabbed for his arm, but I was too late. Too slow.
Then I saw him. Through the shards still clinging to the frame’s edge, I saw him. I ripped my hand back and clutched my throat.
For it was not Captain’s face that appeared through the glass. It was a scarred face, a furious face. A man with his lips curled back and teeth bared in violence.
I reeled back two steps, and the face changed to a woman’s. Then another man’s. Then too fast to tell, I saw one person blur into the next—each as vicious and wrathful as the last.
Then Captain dropped the glass, and his hands clutched at his face. “Stop,” he snarled. “I can’t understand you—”
He broke off, whipping around. Then he shouted into the darkness, “Who are you? Show yourselves!” He spun again, louder and louder with each cry. “Stop shouting at me—who are you? Stop, stop,stop.”
He fell to his knees in a great crunch of bone that rattled through the tiles. His movement turned jerky and frantic.
I did not know what to do. My feet were stuck to the floor, and my mind had shrunk down to a useless pinprick of thought:What is happening to him?
I got my answer mere moments later when he lurched right for me.
“Kill me.” The words razored from his throat. His eyes bulged, glittering orbs in the dim circle of light. “KILL ME.”
Black lines radiated across his face and into his eyes. One black bubble built at the edge of his jaw.
I didn’t think—there was no time for it. All I could do was react. He was cleaving, his magic was burning through him, and if I didn’t dosomethingright now, he would kill me.
I had not seen cleaving before, but I had read about it often enough to know death was the only outcome.
I flung the torch at him. It shuddered through the air, and before I saw it land, I was at the pedestal and hauling up the massive hilt. It took both my hands to grip it, but that shorn steel jutting up was still long enough to slice.
And long enough, I hoped, to kill.
I rounded back toward him. On his hands and knees, he had already crawled past the torch. It burned behind him, silhouetting him in flame.
He looked like Skull-Face from the Crypts.
I attacked. Ihadto—he was too large for me to fight if I didn’t get him while he was low. So I aimed for his face, and I charged.
In two leaping steps, I was to him. He tipped back his head, as if offering me his throat.
“Kill me,” he repeated. No longer a rasp, but a clear, insistent command that coursed straight to the center of my mind.
I stumbled. I slowed. I hesitated.
And in that moment, the Rook dove between us. Feathers and howling and talons to slice. The attack he had threatened in the workshop he now gave in full force.
His claws slashed my face, his power drove me back. The blade fell from my hands in a clatter of metal. I rocked back, arms flailing—but not enough to keep me from crashing to the floor.
Then everything stopped. The Rook flapped to Captain, who now lay sprawled across the tiles, and for several booming heartbeats, I sat there and did not move.
My wrists ached from breaking my fall. My face burned with lines of throbbing heat, where each of the Rook’s talons had torn skin.
Meanwhile, the torch flickered on and on, shadows to undulate over Captain. Darkness thrummed around me. I was outside the light’s reach; I could hear nothing but my own shallow breaths and slamming pulse.
“I’m sorry.” The words slid over the tiles to me. Captain rolled to his side, the movement stiff. Pained. With the torch behind him, I couldn’t see his face. “I … am so sorry, Ryber.”
