he simply seemed to float in the air, seated in a cross-legged position, his hands on his knees, his black mask lifted to the moonlight above.
When he spoke next, his voice was so deep it seemed to make the very ceiling rattle. “The problem with might, you see,” he said, “is that there’s always someone mightier.”
Crasedes reached out with an open hand—and then he crooked his fingers, very slightly.
The Michiel captain gagged.
Then he screamed, and twitched. And then he began to…
Float.
The Michiel soldiers watched in amazement as their captain slowly rose into the air, like a puppet on strings. His face was fixed in an expression of terrible agony, and he shrieked, long and loud—and then he suddenly seemed to implode.
It was without a doubt the most horrific sight Orso had ever seen. First the captain’s arms snapped in, and then his legs folded up with a crack, and then his ribs and shoulders crinkled inward, and then his skull became curiously elongated, like someone stretching a piece of clay. It was as if he were being crushed by the fists of an invisible giant, clutching each limb one at a time—and yet, he did not bleed, not one drop.
Crasedes twitched a finger, and the ruined body of the captain fell to the ground with a clump—and yet it kept twitching.
He’s still alive, thought Orso, horrified. He…He did all that to him but, oh my God, he’s still goddamn alive!
One of the Michiels screamed, “Shoot the bastard!”
The next thing Orso knew, the air was filled with the sounds of dozens of hundreds of scrived bolts hurtling through the air.
He screamed and shut his eyes, certain that one of the stray bolts would fly through his chest or face, but…then the sound tapered off.
He opened his eyes.
Crasedes was still floating in the air, yet he had one hand raised—and it seemed like it was holding a giant ball of gray fuzz. The ball appeared to grow denser and denser, but then Orso realized it was not fuzz, but bolts, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds of them, all gathering around Crasedes’s hand—but none of them actually struck him.
“Enough,” boomed Crasedes’s voice—and then the ball of bolts flew apart.
Orso watched, terrified, as the bolts all flew back directly at the people who had fired them, dozens of soldiers shredded to pieces in an instant—but then Crasedes guided the wave of bolts with one hand, like they were a school of fish flitting throughout the atrium. He pointed at one balcony where a soldier crouched, and the river of bolts consumed it, devouring him utterly, and then it snaked through the walkways and shredded another soldier attempting to flee. It all happened so fast Orso’s eye could barely translate what he was seeing.
“Complacent,” said Crasedes.
While the river of bolts raged behind him, he pointed a finger at two soldiers before him, then ripped his hand back. Their faces seemed to burst with blood, and their arms went limp—but the blood kept coming and coming out of them, coiling in the air like a long red snake, until Crasedes lazily waved and it splashed to the ground while the soldiers collapsed.
Orso stared. Did…Did he just pull the blood out of those men?
“Overconfident,” proclaimed Crasedes.
He pointed at two soldiers with both hands, and then smashed them together. With a scream, the two men flew together and crunched, like a child taking two dolls of clay and smooshing them into one. He flicked his hands at them, and the mashed-together men fell to the ground.
“Fat,” he said, “and sated…and slow.”
He raised his arms and made a gesture as if sweeping a table clean, and with a chorus of screams, all the soldiers and rubble and ruins around Orso slid to the side of the atrium like someone had picked up the whole building and tilted it.
Orso screamed in abject terror, but he noticed—he did not slide. Nor did Gregor. Both of them stayed right where they were.
“You don’t know how many empires I’ve crushed