And he was bleeding. From something on his front. I could see the blood dribbling down from between his knees, rills of dark red threading over his thighs.
We rode on until we were within fifty span of him. Then Miljin bellowed through his mask: “Ditelus! Hold!”
The crackler didn’t stop moving. He just kept hobbling on.
“Stop where you are, damn you!” said Miljin. “By order of the Imperial Iudex, I command you to stop!”
He did not stop.
“Militis,” said Kitlan in a warning voice. “We are here from the contagion crew. If you don’t comply, and if we can’t determine your state, we will have to set you alight. It’s up to you if you’re alive or dead while you burn.”
Still, he did not stop.
We all looked at one another. Then we spurred our horses on until we were alongside Ditelus, though we rode at a safe distance.
Unlike his body, the crackler’s face was surprisingly normal. His pale gold hair was cropped close to his dark, sun-tanned scalp, and his eyes were small and sad. Blood poured from his lips down his chin and his neck, soaking through his black shirt and dribbling between his legs. He wheezed and gasped as he walked, his massive lungs gurgling and clicking with each breath. Every now and again his face spasmed with pain, like he was putting weight on some bone broken within his foot.
“Ditelus! Where is Captain Kiz Jolgalgan?” demanded Miljin. “Is she here?”
The crackler said nothing. He just shambled on, his giant boots making a thump-thump.
“Where have you been? What have you done?”
He said nothing.
“Did you help her break into the halls of the Hazas?”
Still nothing.
Then, sighing, Miljin asked, “Ditelus…where are you going, man?”
For a while Ditelus kept hobbling on. Yet then he answered in a soft, curious, high-pitched voice, whispering, “H-home.”
“You’re going home?”
“Yes,” he gasped. Blood flew from his lips with the word.
Miljin looked ahead. “There’s naught but wall in this direction, son.”
“I…I am going home,” whispered Ditelus. His face shook with pain. “To the g-green fields of beans, and…and yellow fields of wheat I once knew.” He blinked hard, and tears began running down his cheeks, carving cloudy lines through the blood. “Air hazy with pollen in early spring. And th-the forests thick with leaves just after, and then heavy with d-dark fruit.” As he limped on, his body began to shake, and he wept. “I shall be there soon.”
“The hell is he talking about?” said Kitlan.
“Oypat,” I said quietly. “I think he’s describing Oypat.”
“Y-yes,” whispered Ditelus. “It was my home. Yet it is dead, and…and I go to join it. I will wander those lands in this next world. And w-what…what a joyous thing that will be.”
Then he stopped, arms limp at his side. His whole body was quaking now.
“Captain Miljin,” said Kitlan lowly. “Get away. Get clear.”
“They took it from us,” wept Ditelus. “Let it die. Made it die.”
“What do you mean?” Miljin demanded. “Who did?”
“And then her…He did it to her, I…I…He did it to her, didn’t he?” Ditelus said helplessly. “Didn’t he?”
“Who?” demanded Miljin. “Jolgalgan? Is that who you mean? What’s happened?”
“Miljin!” said Kitlan, louder. “Get away! Something’s wrong!”
She was right. Something was moving at Ditelus’s breastbone. Something twitching and curling, under his shirt.
“You…you Iudex,” screamed Ditelus. “You say you want justice. You always say that! You always say that!”
Miljin saw what was happening now. He wheeled his horse away, looking back over his shoulder as something within Ditelus began to…
Sprout.
“To see these walls!” roared Ditelus. “To see what men have made! And know that they could have saved us, but…but…”
Then came a horrid sound, akin to thick fabric ripping, followed by an awful crackling, crinkling sound; and then, like a moth breaking free of its pupa, the dappleglass emerged, a thick, vibrant, undulating shock of bright iridescent green splitting his flesh and rising into the air. It burst from his collarbone, parting him along the side and boiling forth from the edge of his rib cage. Blood poured from his throat in a sudden splash, and then his face was concealed, lost in the shivering coils of roots and the quaking, dark leaves; but the crackling sound continued, as if the vegetation was breaking every length of his bones, crushing them to powder. Then the crackling stopped, yet the column of dappleglass kept silently rising, stretching into the sky in a dark, shimmering column.