Chapter Three

Into the Fire

Isaac stared into sunken eyes filled with white smoke. They look so peaceful. He thought to himself. How can such an insane monster appear so calm? The wispy clouds swirled back and forth in lazy laps and didn’t betray their secrets. Now that he saw them up close, Crassus’s eyes looked almost kind.

Crassus let go of his arm. Isaac flinched, ready to be split in two just as the bandit had been. But the pain didn’t come, instead Crasuss rummaged around the linings of his coat with feeble, almost gentle hands. The transformation unsettled Isaac. Crassus turned from an uncaring tidal wave of destruction into a mumbling beggar, disabled and old, in a matter of seconds. His hands shook, but not from rage, they shook with confusion and uncertainty. Crassus seemed to forget what he was looking for every couple of seconds, then recall and continue his search.

“I don’t have it on me,” he told Crassus, voice trembling before he could bring it under control. “I have to go get it, okay?” He tried with all his might to pretend that Crassus was a demented senior out on an adventure to escape the drudgery of the nursinghome. “I don’t have it right here at this moment. But, tell you what, I’ll go and get it, okay? I’ll go away just a couple seconds, and then I’ll be right back, is that alright?”

Crassus just looked at him like a six year old, caught in the act of eating the last cookie. His mouth flapped open and shut like a goldfish, his opaque eyes appearing blinder than ever. Demented senior. He’s just a demented senior. “I’ll go and get it now okay? It’ll just be a minute.” No response. Is he even aware I’m talking to him? Isaac stood up. Crassus latched onto his forearm.

“Please… I need it!” Desperation tinged his voice and his grip felt like vice of iron jaws gnashing at his bones.

“Stop! Ouch, let go!” Isaac tried to wrestle back control of his arm but he couldn’t move it a hair’s breadth, he might as well have tried to grapple a statue made of lead. Crassus’s face only betrayed his determination, his grasp tightened to unbearable levels.

There was a sickening crack. The loudness stunned Isaac, but then every sensation and thought washed away under the onslaught of pain. He screamed.

Crassus let go and Isaac’s forearm tilted to one side. The image of it seared into Isaac’s mind. He’d seen mangled bodies before, but somehow his own body mangled in the same way appeared all the more grotesque and obscene.

Crassus stared at the arm in horror, like he couldn’t understand how it had happened. Isaac stopped screaming. Tears stung his eyes. He fought to regain control of his body, to ignore the pain.

“Don’t… I mean….” he managed, his voice catching multiple times. He tried again, “Be patient… Alright?” This time he waited, looking Crassus in the eyes. Can he actually see out of those? They don’t look like any eyes I’ve ever seen before.“Alright?” he repeated. Crassus nodded, like a child. Isaac hesitated. On a mad impulse, he waved one hand in front of Crassus’s face. No reaction. He waved again, this time closer, and Crassus flinched, but he looked off in the wrong direction. Isaac paused for even longer. What did this mean?

Holding his ruined arm gingerly, Isaac stumbled away from Crassus, finding to his surprise that his left leg dragged behind each step. It felt swollen. When had that happened? Isaac put the thought away, survival was paramount. Keeping one eye on Crassus he walked over to Aster. Crassus tracked him with his head the whole time, but now that Isaac paid attention to his sightline, Crassus looked at a spot above his head, not at Isaac himself.

How could he not see a hand waved inches from his face, but he could see a man walking several steps away. Maybe Crassus was partially blinded, did blindness work in that way? Isaac did not know. He’d known blind or nearly blind people throughout his life, but he had never asked. Crassus whimpered and began fidgeting, clawing at his chainmail as if something about it bothered him, no doubt something to do with the keys that had spilled out from it. Isaac hastened his pace. Best not to dwell too long, he couldn’t really believe he was still alive in the first place.

He bent down over Aster’s crumpled body. He winced at the sight of her hand. It looked as if her pinky and ring fingers had been turned into paste.

One-handed, he shook her shoulder. “Hey!” he whispered in near hysterics. “Get up!” No movement, not even a flicker of the eyelid. “Wake up!” His voice cracked as he raised it involuntarily from sheer panic. Crassus whimpered like a wounded dog and slapped the earth with a flat hand so hard Isaac felt a tremor vibrate up his feet.

Crassus would start throwing things soon, Isaac could feel it, just like he had always been able to feel it when a person he was talking to was about to become violent. Despair and powerlessness bore in on him. His arm broken, his whereabouts unknown, strange phenomenon he could not even begin to explain, a raving lunatic of a madman who somehow possessed the strength of fifty men, no place to run to and no chance in hell of making it there before being split in half had he known a place.

Abandoning all caution he clung to the only hope he could see; Aster. He screamed at the top of his lungs for her to get up, his throat hurt and he felt something starting to tear but he pushed his voice harder. Aster twitched, her eyelids rolled back, but no conscious thought showed there. She started convulsing, bucking against the ground, again and again.

Crassus threw something and it crashed down a distance away from Isaac and Aster. The rending sound of the object shattering made sweat pour down Isaac’s back. His face flushed and his hands trembled. Overpowering panic drove every sane thought out of his mind. Only a single realization remained behind; the need to survive. It coursed through him like a fever, like nothing had ever done before in his life.

Something large sailed above their head. He wanted to run but his feet felt like boulders. He wanted to scream but only the taste of blood filled his mouth. He couldn’t hope to fight back. He didn’t want to stay but he couldn’t move. He could only think of one thing, and as the thought echoed inside his mind over and over, he found himself confiding out loud to the unconscious girl before him. “I don’t wanna die.” His throat only allowed a hoarse whisper, but there it was.

Isaac had been reckless, he could see that now. He’d pushed forward in his grief over his brother, and now he would pay the price and die here, alone with strangers, killed by a complete lunatic with superhuman strength. Isaac doubted whether Crassus was even aware of what he was doing. A strange sense of calm enveloped him, and the panic faded. He couldn’t quite explain it, but something changed inside him. Had he gone insane too?