Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 823: The First Ender

The quiet spread toward them across the grass.

Almond could hear it coming. That was the strange part. He could hear where the sound ended, like the edge of a tide. The wind stopped rustling a hundred yards out. Then eighty. Then fifty.

"Everyone up!" he shouted. "Anyone with steel, to the front! Get the wounded behind the fire and"

His voice stopped.

His mouth was still moving. He could feel the air leaving his chest. But nothing came out, and nothing came back to his ears. There was no wind and no fire. He could not even hear his own heart.

The quiet had reached them.

All around him, thousands of people were shouting. He could see their mouths open. He could not hear one of them.

Then the thing that had brought the quiet walked into the firelight.

It was as tall as a house.

It stood on four legs that were much too long and much too thin. Its hide was pale and smooth, like wet chalk. It had no eyes. Its head was wide and flat, and under its jaw hung a heavy sac of skin, shaped like a bell.

The bell swung as it walked. It made no sound at all.

It turned its flat head toward the fire. Then it swung one long leg sideways, almost lazily, and three people flew through the air.

Nobody heard them land.

The crowd broke. Almond saw it happen in perfect silence. People turned to run and crashed into the people behind them, who had heard nothing and seen nothing. A man went down. Someone stepped on him. Rudra was roaring orders with his whole chest, and he might as well have been a painting.

Stop.

The word was not a sound. It simply arrived, in the middle of Almond’s head, clear and steady.

Stop running. Everyone stop. It’s Marcus. You can hear me. Stand still.

Almond turned.

Marcus was standing on a rock with one hand pressed to his temple. His lips were moving. Blood had started to run from his nose.

Voice, Almond thought. It reaches whoever he’s speaking to.

It took the sound, Marcus said, in every head at once. That’s all it took. You can still see. You can still fight. Front ranks, kneel so the ones behind can see over you. Anyone with steel, look for Big D.

The crowd slowed. Then it stopped.

Marcus dropped to one knee on the rock. He kept his hand on his temple, and he kept talking.

Big D was already walking.

He went straight toward the thing, alone, at the pace of a man crossing a room. He stopped thirty feet in front of the fire, and set his feet.

Hold.

Almond felt it from fifty feet away. The ground under his boots seemed to firm up. The shaking went out of his knees. All around Big D, people who had been about to run found that they did not want to anymore.

A line began to form on him. Asuras with spears. Hiroshi with his bare fists. Ainen with his cleaver.

The Ender swung its leg at the old man.

It hit him square in the chest. It was a blow that had just thrown three people through the air.

Big D slid backward one foot. His boots cut two short tracks in the dirt. He did not fall, and he did not step away.

He spat blood into the grass and set his feet again.

It’s weak in the throat, Marcus said. His words were coming slower now. Natalia. Show them.

Natalia had no bow. She raised her empty hand and pointed.

Mark.

A dull red spot bloomed on the pale hide. It sat at the very top of the hanging bell, where the bell joined the jaw. It glowed like a coal, and every eye in the field could see it.

There, Marcus said. That’s where it dies. Somebody get it down to where we can reach.

Rudra stepped out of the line.

He was already gray from stopping a pebble. He lifted his hand anyway and fixed his eyes on the nearest of the four long legs.

Stillness.

The leg stopped in the middle of a step.

It was only for a breath. But the Ender had been putting its weight forward, and for that breath, one of its legs was not there to catch it. It lurched. Its flat head came down fast and low.

Rudra fell on his face in the grass and did not get up.

Kael was moving before Rudra hit the ground.

He had his sword. It was plain steel now, and he was only a man. He ran at the stumbling leg like any soldier would.

Then, three steps out, he reached for the small thing that was left of the wind.

Swiftness.

For three steps, he was fast again. He was not as fast as he had been. But he was faster than anything that big could follow. His sword went through the back of the thin leg, low down, where the tendon stood out like a rope.

The leg folded.

Kael hit the ground on the far side and rolled. He lay on his back with his chest heaving and could not lift his arms.

The Ender crashed down onto its knees. Its head was at the height of a man now.

Its bell swung wildly. Its other front leg swept across the grass, straight toward the place where Lily stood.

Almond saw it coming.

He was too far away. He had no blade in his hand, and no deck behind him. He had five words written on a line of light and no idea how far any of them could reach.

He threw out his hand.

Deny.

The leg stopped a foot from Lily’s side.

It did not hit a wall. It simply did not arrive. It hung there, shaking, like a door held shut against a storm.

It felt like holding up a falling tree with one arm. Almond’s vision went white. He held it for one heartbeat, and then a second.

It was long enough.

Lily did not step back. She did not even look at the leg. She was looking at the thing’s face, and at the silent bell under its jaw.

She was not afraid of the quiet. She had lived in it all her life. She had built her whole self around a silence nobody else could hear.

And this thing had walked into her field and used her word.

She raised both hands.

Silence.

She did not make more of it. She took it.

She pulled the quiet out of the air like pulling a sheet off a bed. For five heartbeats, every sound in that field came crashing back.

The fire roared. Thousands of people were screaming. The wind howled across the grass.

And the bell under the Ender’s jaw rang.

It had been swinging in silence for the whole of the creature’s life. It had never once heard itself. Now it rang like a cracked iron gong, and the Ender reared back and shrieked, shaking its flat head from side to side.

"ALMOND!" Lily screamed. After so much quiet, her voice nearly knocked him over. "NOW!"

He let go of the leg.

Ainen threw him the cleaver.

Almond caught it by the handle and ran. The thing was thrashing on its knees, and its head was whipping back and forth. Natalia’s mark glowed red at the top of the bell.

He looked at it the way he had looked at ten thousand enemies.

Sever.

The world went narrow.

There was a line. It was thin as a hair, and it ran through the red mark and across the root of the bell. Everything else about the creature was thick hide and hard bone. That one line was soft.

It was so much fainter than it had ever been. At Tier-100 he would have seen it from a mile away. Now he had to be close enough to touch it.

He got close enough.

The cleaver was a cook’s tool. It was heavy and plain, and Ainen kept it very sharp.

It went through the line.

The bell came away from the jaw. Something dark poured out. The Ender’s shriek cut off, and its four long legs went loose all at once. It toppled sideways and hit the ground so hard that the fire jumped.

This time, everybody heard it land.

The quiet did not come back.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Almond stood beside the huge pale body with the cleaver hanging from his hand. He was shaking from head to foot. His ribs were on fire.

Lily was on her knees in the grass. Marcus had fallen off his rock. Rudra and Kael were both flat on the ground, and neither was trying to get up.

Big D still stood where he had planted himself. He looked down at the two tracks his boots had cut.

"One foot," he said. "It moved me one foot." He sounded annoyed.

"How many did it take?" Ainen asked. He was staring at the body. "To kill one. How many of us?"

"Eight," Natalia said. "And a few thousand to stand there and not run."

"And that was a small one," Rudra said into the grass. "I’d bet anything that was a small one."

Nobody argued with him.

Kayla was already running toward the three people the Ender had thrown. Two of them were not moving.

"Lily!" she shouted. "I need time! I’ve only got Mend, and it’s slow!"

Lily got up. She should not have been able to. She stumbled across the grass, dropped down between the two still bodies, and put one hand on each of their chests.

Shelter.

A pale glow spread under her palms. It was no bigger than a blanket. Once, it had covered a quarter of a mile.

But the two people under it stopped dying. They did not get better. They simply stayed, held exactly where they were, while Kayla bent over the first one and went to work.

"Don’t let go," Kayla said.

"I won’t," Lily said. Her arms were trembling. "Just hurry."

It was an hour before anyone thought about the body.

It was Sylvia who spoke of it. She had stood in the line with a borrowed spear, and she was still holding it. She did not seem to know how to put it down.

"The voice said to take what is left of it," she said. "And to hold it against what we are."

Almond walked back to the dead Ender. He crouched by its open jaw. Its teeth were long and thin, like needles of white stone.

He broke one off. It was as long as his forearm.

"Against what we are," he said.

He held the fang in both hands. He thought of the line that only he could see.

Sever.

The fang grew warm. Then it grew hot. It began to crumble at both ends, falling in on itself like sand running into a hole. In a few breaths there was no fang at all. There was only a small, smooth sphere lying in his palm, gray as rain.

Words wrote themselves in the air above it.

[Power Orb: Quiet Edge]

[Quality: F]

[Your next cut makes no sound and gives no warning.]

The orb sank into his hand and was gone. On his status, a line changed.

[Power Orbs: 1 of 10]

"Huh," Almond said.

Rudra had crawled over to watch. He broke off a piece of the leg bone and closed his fist around it.

Stillness.

The bone grew warm. Then it cracked down the middle and fell to dust. Nothing was left.

"It didn’t take," Rudra said, frowning at his empty hand.

"It didn’t fit," Almond said slowly. "The fang cuts, and so do I. That bone doesn’t have anything to do with stopping."

They both turned and looked at the bell.

It lay in the grass where it had fallen. It was a great sac of pale skin with a hard ring of bone inside it. It was the thing that had made the quiet.

Lily was still kneeling over the wounded. Kayla had finished with the first and was halfway through the second.

"When she’s done," Almond said. "That one’s hers."

It took Lily a long time to walk over.

She knelt by the bell and laid both hands on it. She closed her eyes.

Silence.

The bell did not crumble. It folded. It drew in on itself smoothly, as if it had been waiting for this. The sphere that it left in her hands was not gray. It was clear, like a drop of still water.

[Power Orb: Hush]

[Quality: E]

[Take all sound from a place you can see. You alone still hear.]

Lily stared at it.

The orb sank into her palms. On her status, two lines changed at once.

[Life Rank: E]

[Power Orbs: 1 of 10]

"It went up," she said. "The rank. It went up because the orb was better."

"Because it fit," Almond said.

He was starting to smile. It was tired and it hurt, but it was real.

"That’s how this place works," he said. "It isn’t about what you kill. It’s about what you are when you kill it."

"Put that fire out."

The voice came from the dark beyond the body. It was a woman’s voice, low and sharp.

Every weapon in the field came up.

Six people walked into the light. They wore gray cloaks the color of the grass. They carried short spears and lanterns with the shutters closed. The woman in front was lean and weathered, with a scar that ran from her ear to her collar.

She looked at the dead Ender. She looked at the fire. Then she looked at the thousands of people behind it, and her face went slack.

"A fire," she said. "At a Door. With that many new souls beside it. Do you have any idea what you have done?"

She stopped. She had seen the stump of the jaw where the bell had been cut away.

"You killed a Husher," she said.

"Is that what it’s called?" Almond asked.

"On your first night. At F." She took a step closer. Her eyes went to Lily, and then to the faint line of light still hanging in front of her. "That says E."

"It did that a minute ago," Lily said.

The woman was quiet for a moment.

"My name is Orla," she said at last. "I scout for Greywatch Sanctuary. It’s a night’s walk east of here. I came because we saw a light where there has never been a light." She looked from face to face. "Who are you people?"

"New," Almond said.

Orla let out a short breath that was almost a laugh.

"Then listen, new people. Every Ender ends one thing. That one ended sound. There are others out there that end worse things than that, and all of them can feel a Door open." She pointed at the fire. "You have until dawn, if you’re lucky. You cannot stay here."

"Then we go to your sanctuary," Rudra said.

Orla looked past him again, at the thousands of faces in the firelight.

"Greywatch holds two thousand," she said quietly. "On a good day."

Nobody said anything.

Behind them, the small fire burned at the foot of the great door. Far out in the dark, something else had started to move.