Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 818: Every Name

Ainen cooked that night.

Nobody asked him to. His shoulder was still bandaged, and Fraisea had told him twice to sit down. He set up his pots anyway at the edge of the canyon and started feeding people.

"You need to rest," Saffa said.

"I am resting," Ainen said. "This is what it looks like."

He fed Regalon first, and then PeakWicked. Then the Skytheum survivors came and stood at the edge of the firelight, not sure if they were welcome. Ainen put bowls in their hands before they could ask.

When everyone had eaten, he filled one more bowl. He carried it to the very edge of the canyon and set it down on the stone.

Clovelle watched him do it. "Who is that for?"

"My guest," Ainen said. "It hasn’t had a proper meal in thirty-seven years."

He did not expect anything to happen. But when he looked back an hour later, the bowl was empty, and the stone under it was warm.

Big D read the names after dark.

He stood on a flat rock in the middle of the Shelf with a single fire behind him. Everyone who could stand was standing. Everyone who could not had been carried out on stretchers, because none of them would agree to stay in the hospital for this.

Big D held a list in his hand. He did not look at it much.

"Four days," he said. "Four hundred and twelve of ours, between Regalon and PeakWicked. I’m going to say every one. It’ll take a while. Nobody leaves."

Nobody left.

He started with the first morning. He read slowly and clearly, and he did not rush a single name.

Some of them were Asuras who had climbed out of the bottom world in chains and had died free. Some of them had begun as constructs in somebody’s deck, and had woken up one day and chosen a name for themselves. Big D read those names exactly the same way as the others.

Here and there in the crowd, someone made a small sound when a name was spoken. A hand found a shoulder. Nobody said anything.

Silvester had made Hiroshi prop him up on his stretcher so he could see. A young Asura stood beside him the whole time, the one he had thrown clear of the mouth on the third day. The boy had not left his side since.

"You don’t have to stand guard over me," Silvester said quietly.

"I know," the boy said. He stayed where he was.

John stood with his ten Sovereigns behind him, all of them in their small forms, all of them silent. When Big D reached the PeakWicked names, John closed his eyes and said each one under his breath along with him.

It took almost an hour.

When Big D reached the end of the list, he folded it and put it inside his coat.

"That’s ours," he said. He looked across the fire. "Skytheum."

Kael Vantress stepped up onto the rock.

Kayla had spent most of the afternoon on his arm, and he could move it again. He stood straight, and he did not carry a list.

"I only have seven," he said. "But I knew every one of them for most of my life."

He said the seven names. After each one, he said one small thing about the person it had belonged to. One of them had laughed too loudly. One had been afraid of deep water and had come down into the body anyway.

When he finished, he stood there for a moment as if he did not know what to do next.

Big D put a hand on his shoulder. It was a heavy hand, and it stayed there.

"They’re on our list now too," Big D said. "We’ll carry them with ours."

Kael nodded. It took him a moment to find his voice.

"Thank you," he said.

Rudra was waiting when he stepped down from the rock. He held out a cup without a word, and Kael took it, and the two of them stood side by side and watched the fire.

Vess found Almond a little later.

He was sitting on a crate near the edge of the firelight, with Lily beside him. Vess stopped a few steps away and waited until he looked up.

"I owe you a message," she said. "It’s thirty-seven years late."

"Skytheum will be in contact," Almond said.

"Yes. That." Vess smiled a little. "The Empress kept deciding it wasn’t the right time. Then the Convergence was announced, and she ran out of time to decide."

"What was the message?"

Vess sat down on the ground across from them. She looked tired all the way through.

"Skytheum has been first on this layer for longer than I’ve been alive," she said. "Everyone thinks that means we want to go through the door first. We don’t. The Empress has been afraid of that door for a very long time."

Lily tilted her head. "Afraid of what?"

"Of going through it alone," Vess said. "Being first means nobody is beside you. She watched your family at the Gutwrack Span, through me. She watched you turn down a bad deal and then not be able to stop thinking about the people it would have saved." She shrugged. "She said that if there was ever a door, those were the people she wanted to walk through it next to."

Almond was quiet for a moment.

"That’s the offer?" he asked. "That’s all of it?"

"That’s all of it. No terms. No trade." Vess looked over at Kael, standing beside Rudra at the fire. "Although I think he already gave you the answer down there, before I ever got to ask the question."

Almond looked at Lily. She nodded.

"Tell her yes," Almond said. "We go through together."

Vess let out a long breath. Then she laughed quietly and shook her head.

"Thirty-seven years," she said. "And it took about ten seconds."

The fires burned low. People drifted off to sleep in twos and threes, right there on the open ground, because nobody wanted to be inside a tent.

Almond and Lily walked out to the edge of the Shelf.

The door stood at the far end of the canyon, taller than a mountain. The strange light still came through the gap. It lit the bottom of the clouds in a color neither of them could name.

They sat down on the stone and looked at it for a while.

"You told the gatekeeper you’d carry someone we haven’t met yet," Almond said.

"I did."

"In front of Rudra. And Ainen. And Kael Vantress."

"I noticed that afterward," Lily said. "I’m choosing not to think about it."

Almond laughed. It still hurt his ribs a little. Then the laugh faded, and he looked down at his hands.

"We don’t know what’s through there," he said. "That was the whole point of waiting. We said we’d find out first, so we could promise a child something real."

"I know what we said."

"And we still don’t know."

Lily was quiet. The light from the door moved slowly across her face.

"I’ve been thinking about that all day," she said. "And I think we got it wrong."

Almond looked at her.

"We kept saying we couldn’t promise a child anything, because we didn’t know what was past the ceiling. So we waited. Thirty-seven years." She shook her head. "But there’s always going to be another ceiling, Almond. There will always be something we don’t know yet. If we wait until we know everything, we’ll wait forever."

"So what do we promise?"

"The only thing we’ve ever had," Lily said. "That we’ll be there. That the whole family will fight over who gets to hold the baby. That Big D will pretend he doesn’t care and then never put it down."

Almond’s throat was tight.

"That Ainen will make it eat vegetables," he said.

"That Rudra will teach it to sail before it can walk."

"That it will never once wear a chain."

Lily’s eyes were wet. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

"That’s a real promise," she said. "It’s the realest one I know. I don’t need to see through that door to make it."

Almond put his arm around her. For a long time, neither of them spoke.

"Are you scared?" he asked finally.

"Yes," Lily said. "Are you?"

"More than I was this morning. And this morning I was inside a heart the size of a mountain."

Lily laughed against his shoulder.

"Good," she said. "Then we’re doing it right."

They stayed there until the fires behind them had burned down to coals. The door stood open at the end of the canyon. Neither of them looked at it again that night.

Kael Vantress found Almond at dawn.

Almond was standing at the cook fire with a cup of something hot. Half the Shelf was still asleep around him.

Kael walked up and stood across the fire from him. He looked rested for the first time in four days. He was rolling his mended arm slowly at the shoulder, testing it.

"Regalon," he said.

"Vantress."

"I’ve fought your wife. I’ve fought your admiral. Both of them nearly killed me." Kael stopped rolling his shoulder. "I have never fought you."

Almond lowered his cup.

"We’re about to walk through a door into something nobody has ever seen," Kael said. "I’m going through it beside you. I’d like to know who I’m standing next to. And I would really rather not spend whatever comes next wondering."

Around the fire, people were beginning to sit up.

Rudra had opened one eye. Lily was already smiling. Somewhere behind them, Silvester’s voice said, very clearly, "Somebody carry my stretcher closer."

Almond looked at Kael for a long moment. Then he finished his drink and set the cup down on a stone.

"No Spirit Lords," he said. "No killing. First one who can’t get up."

Kael grinned. It made him look ten years younger.

"I wouldn’t have it any other way," he said.