The Gapmaker's hand closed around Big D's arm.
It was cold and wet, like river clay. It did not squeeze. It simply held on, the same way it had held the stones.
And Big D felt his edges begin to go.
It was very strange. It did not hurt, not at first. He looked down at his own arm, where the gray fingers were wrapped around it. He could not tell where his arm stopped and the clay began.
There had always been a line there. Skin, and then the world. Him, and then everything that was not him.
The line was going soft.
Rudra saw it from twenty yards away, in the middle of the fight at the gap.
Big D's arm was going gray where the Gapmaker held it. The gray was spreading. It ran up past his wrist toward his elbow, and his skin was turning the color of wet sand. At the edges, very faintly, it was starting to crumble.
"Big D!"
Big D did not seem to hear him. He was staring down at his own arm with a strange, faraway look on his face.
"Huh," he said quietly. "So that's what it does."
