Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 821: The Crossing

They walked to the door at dawn.

The whole kingdom walked together. It filled the canyon from wall to wall, a river of people that ran back farther than anyone at the front could see.

Almond and Lily led it. Rudra and Ainen walked on either side of them, with Big D a step behind. The Empress of Skytheum walked on Almond’s left with Kael and Vess, and behind her came seven of her dead, carried on the shoulders of the living.

John strolled along on the right with his hands in his pockets. His ten Sovereigns padded and drifted and coiled along behind him.

Nobody talked much.

The door grew as they came closer. It had looked as tall as a mountain from the Shelf. Up close, there was no top to it at all. The gap in it was wide enough for a hundred people to walk through side by side.

The strange light poured out over them.

Almond stopped at the edge of it.

"Before we go in," he said, "there’s something I should have told you last night."

He told them what the gatekeeper had said.

He kept it short. The crossing had weight. Each of them would carry whatever they had named. And he had named everyone.

Rudra stared at him.

"You knew this last night," he said.

"Yes."

"And you let us sit around a fire and eat."

"It was a good fire," Almond said.

Rudra opened his mouth and shut it again. He looked like he wanted to hit something.

Big D had gone very still. He was looking at Almond the way he had looked at him a long time ago, in the bottom world, when Almond had been young and stubborn and much too sure of himself.

"How heavy?" Big D asked.

"I don’t know. It said very."

"And if you can’t hold it?"

Almond looked back at the river of people filling the canyon behind them.

"Then I suppose some of them don’t come through," he said. "So I’ll hold it."

He turned around before anyone could answer and stepped into the light.

There was no ground.

There was only the light, in every direction, and a long way off there was a second gap that looked very small. He was standing on nothing, and somehow it held him.

Then the weight came down.

It did not land on his shoulders. It landed on all of him at once. It was not like carrying a stone. It was like carrying a crowd, and every person in the crowd had a name.

He felt Marcus. He felt Natalia and Kayla and every one of the nine. He felt Silvester’s bad jokes and Hiroshi’s patience. He felt tens of thousands of Asuras who had climbed out of chains. He felt every construct that had ever opened its eyes in one of his decks and asked him who it was.

He felt all of them. They were so heavy.

His knee hit the nothing under him.

"Almond!" Lily was beside him.

"I’m alright." He was not alright. He got the knee up again. "I’m alright. Keep them moving."

He took a step. It was the hardest step he had ever taken.

He took another.

Behind him, the kingdom began to pour through the door.

Everyone felt their own weight.

Rudra grunted as it hit him, and his back bent. He had named his crew, and his crew was every sailor and marine who had ever stood a watch for him.

Ainen staggered sideways and laughed out loud in surprise. "My kitchen weighs more than I do," he said. "I should have named something smaller."

Kael walked with his jaw tight. He had named only seven. They were heavier than he had expected them to be.

The Empress of Skytheum had her head down and her teeth set. She had not been there when the question was asked. She was carrying an empire anyway.

"Is it always like this for you?" she asked Almond, through her teeth.

"I’ll tell you when I’ve had a chance to compare," Almond said.

He was twenty steps in. His legs were shaking. Sweat ran off his chin and dropped away into the light.

At thirty steps, his vision started to go dark at the edges.

At forty, he stopped.

He did not mean to. His body simply would not do it. He stood there with his head hanging and his hands on his knees, and the far gap looked no closer than it had at the start.

Far behind him, at the very back of the column, somebody screamed.

She had woken up eight months ago.

Before that, she had been a spirit-construct in a deck, one of thousands. Then one morning she had opened her eyes and known that she was herself. She had picked a name. She had learned to like bread.

She was the last one through the door, and Almond’s grip on her was the weakest.

She felt herself sliding backward.

Her feet were not moving, but the door was getting closer behind her. The light was pulling her out the way she had come in. She grabbed at the air and found nothing.

"Help!" she screamed. "Somebody! I’m slipping!"

A hand closed around her wrist.

It was the young Asura, the one Silvester had thrown clear of the mouth on the third day. He had been walking just in front of her. He had dug his heels into nothing at all, and he was holding on with both hands.

"Not on my watch," he said through his teeth. Everyone in the kingdom knew whose words those were. "Grab on."

She grabbed on.

But now he was sliding too.

Almond felt it happen. He felt the two of them slipping at the far end of everything he carried, like a rope running out through his hands.

"No," he said. He tried to straighten up. "No. Not one. Not one of them."

He could not lift his head.

Lily’s arm came around him.

She pulled his arm across her shoulders and stood up under it. The weight shifted. It did not go away, but half of it was suddenly somewhere else.

Almond gasped. "What did you do?"

"I told it I’d carry you," Lily said. Her voice was strained, and her knees were shaking already. "You’re carrying them. So I’m carrying them too. That’s how it works."

"Lily, you can’t."

"You said everyone," Lily said. "You never said alone."

Rudra’s hand closed on his other arm.

"My crew," Rudra said. "Same people. I’ve been carrying them for years. Give me some of that."

The weight shifted again.

"A seat for anyone who shows up hungry," Ainen said. He put his shoulder against Almond’s back. "That’s all of them. They’re always hungry."

"Nine of us," Maya said quietly, and took Lily’s free hand.

Then a heavy hand came down on the back of Almond’s neck. It was a hand he had known for most of his life.

"Nobody asked me," Big D said. "I wasn’t down there. So I’ll answer now."

His rasp carried back through the whole crossing.

"Everyone," he said. "Same as the boy. Every last one."

The weight shifted.

Behind Big D, Natalia said it. Then Kayla, then Marcus. Then Silvester and Hiroshi together. It went back through the column like a wave. Thousands of voices said the same word, one after another, until it reached the very end.

The young Asura was still sliding. He said it too.

"Everyone."

He stopped sliding.

The girl in his grip was crying. She said it last of all.

Almond stood up straight.

The weight was still there. It was every bit as heavy as it had been. But it was not on him anymore. It was on all of them, each one carrying all the rest, and spread that wide, it was something a person could walk under.

"Huh," Almond said. His voice cracked. "That’s better."

They walked.

It was still hard. The far gap was a long way off, and there was nothing under them but light. People stumbled. The weight pressed everyone down, and with no ground to push against, some of the older ones and the wounded began to fall behind.

Almond saw it.

He almost laughed. Of course. He had built a deck for this, and he had not even known it.

"Choir of Carried Thrones," he said.

The eight Spirit Lords stepped out of the light around him. Each one stood on its own piece of ground.

"I built this for the one place that wouldn’t let us stand," Almond told them. "I thought that was the body. It wasn’t. It was here."

[Alfred: We understand, Master.]

[Sylvia: A road, then.]

[Ashkryon: How far do you wish us to carry it?]

"All the way across," Almond said. "For everybody."

The eight thrones spread out. They did not form a circle this time. They formed a line, each one’s ground joined to the next, from the front of the column toward the far gap. It was solid earth and stone, laid over nothing at all.

The kingdom stepped onto it. Feet found something to push against at last.

John walked up beside Almond and looked down at the road.

"Mind if we borrow that?" he asked.

"Go ahead."

"Terravax," John said. "Help the man out."

The great turtle swelled to its true size at the edge of the road. Its forests and rivers spread out along both sides, and suddenly the road was three times as wide.

The Empress of Skytheum stepped onto the carried ground. She stood there for a moment and breathed.

"Thirty-seven years," she said to Kael. "I was right to wait for them."

The far gap grew.

It took a long time. Nobody could have said how long. But it grew, step by step, until it was as wide as the door they had come in by.

The light changed as they reached it. It went from gold to the color that had no name.

Almond stopped at the edge. Lily was still under his arm. Neither of them had let go.

"Together," she said.

They stepped through.

There was ground under their feet. It was real ground, cool and solid.

There was wind. It smelled like rain and something green.

Almond blinked until his eyes cleared. Then he looked up, and he forgot to breathe.

They were standing on the edge of a land so wide that it had no far side. But that was not what he was looking at.

Far below them, small and bright in an ocean of dark, hung three round shapes stacked one above the other. They looked like coins.

"Rombe showed us that," Ainen said slowly. "On Layer One. A picture of disks in a stack."

"Those are the layers," Rudra said. "All three of them. That’s everything we ever climbed."

Nobody said anything for a while. Everything they had bled for was down there. From here, it would have fit in the palm of a hand.

Then Lily touched Almond’s arm and pointed up.

Above them, there were more.

Disk after disk rose into the sky, each one vast, each one farther than the last. They went up and up until they were only faint rings of light. Then they went up farther than that.

Nobody could count them.

The Hub lit up in front of every one of them.

[You have entered Layer Four.]

[Lifeform: Tier-100.]

[Standing in Layer Four: Unranked.]

For a long moment, the only sound was the wind.

Then Big D started to laugh. It was a deep, rough, surprised laugh, and nobody there had heard it more than a few times in their lives.

"Bottom of the ladder," he said. "I told you."

Marcus came pushing up through the crowd with his list in his hand. His face was gray with tiredness, and he was grinning like a boy.

"I counted," he said. "Twice. Everyone’s through. Every single one."

Almond’s legs gave out at last. He sat down in the cool grass of a new world, and Lily sat down beside him.

Behind them, Ainen was already crouched at the foot of the great door, piling up kindling.

"What are you doing?" Saffa asked.

Ainen struck a spark. A small, steady flame caught and began to climb.

"Somebody asked us to leave a light on," he said.