Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 827: What Fits

Big D laid down the rule at dawn.

"Don’t hunt what’s close," he said. "Hunt what fits."

He stood on a wagon in the middle of the camp, with every party leader gathered around him. Orla stood beside him, and two of Hessa’s hunters had come out past the line to listen.

"You all saw what happened to Rudra," Big D said. "First night, he grabbed a bone and it turned to dust. Second night, he found the thing that matched him, and he walked away an E." He looked around at them. "So we don’t waste parts. Before you kill something, you know who it’s for."

"How do we know what fits before we kill it?" someone asked.

"You ask the cook," Big D said.

Ainen raised a hand from the back. He looked very tired already.

"I can taste them from a distance," he said. "Not far. A few hundred yards. But it’s enough to tell you what something ends before you walk up and find out the hard way."

"So Ainen walks the grass with Orla’s people every morning," Big D said. "He tells us what’s out there. Then we match a party to it." He jumped down off the wagon. "Eight to a party. Three days. Nobody hunts alone."

Ainen found his own first.

He was out on the northern grass with Orla and his three wives an hour after sunrise. He stopped suddenly on a low rise and closed his eyes.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, that’s disgusting."

"What is it?" Fraisea asked.

"Something that’s never full." Ainen made a face. "It tastes like an empty stomach that’s been empty for a hundred years. It wants everything."

"A Gorger," Orla said. She had gone a little pale. "It ends fullness. It eats and eats and never stops being hungry. Grass, dirt, stone. People, if it can get them."

"Big?"

"Big enough. They’re slow. But if it gets hold of you, it doesn’t let go until you’re inside it."

Ainen opened his eyes. He looked thoughtful.

"Is it ever offered food?" he asked.

Orla stared at him. "What?"

"Does anyone ever just give it something? Freely. Before it takes it."

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Because that’s what a host does," Ainen said. He was already reaching into his pack.

The Gorger was lying in a shallow valley, chewing.

It looked like a hill of pale, loose skin with a mouth at one end. The mouth was very wide. There was a deep trench in the grass behind it, where it had eaten its way across the valley floor, dirt and roots and all.

Saffa had the lead. She knelt at the top of the slope and pressed her palm to the ground.

Frost.

A thin skin of ice spread down the slope and across the valley floor. It was not much. It would not have stopped a child. But the Gorger’s front end slid on it when it turned, and it turned slower.

"It’s seen us," Clovelle said.

The great mouth swung toward them. It began to drag itself up the slope.

Ainen walked down to meet it.

He had a round loaf of bread in his hands, a little squashed from his pack. He walked right up to the edge of Saffa’s ice and stopped twenty feet in front of the open mouth. It could have swallowed him with room to spare.

"Hello," he said. "I made this yesterday. It’s not my best. The flour here is strange."

He tossed the loaf.

The Gorger caught it. Of course it did. It had never in its life been offered food. It had only ever taken. Its mouth closed on the bread before it could have thought about it, if it ever thought at all.

Host.

Ainen felt the binding catch.

It was not like the gatekeeper. It was thin and weak, the way everything was weak here. But it was there, a small thread running from his open hand to the thing that had eaten from it.

"You’re my guest," he said quietly. "And a guest doesn’t harm anyone under my roof."

He spread his arms a little, to take in his three wives on the slope behind him.

The Gorger lunged.

It got halfway to Fraisea and stopped. Its huge mouth hung open in front of her. It shook. It strained forward, and it could not close the last six feet. Something in it would not let it.

"Now," Ainen said, through his teeth. "I can’t hold it long."

Clovelle reached out and folded the space between the Gorger and the slope behind it.

Fold.

The thing’s back half was suddenly ten feet to the left of its front half. It was still attached, but now it was twisted in a way that a body should never be twisted. It screamed out of its huge mouth.

Fraisea stepped up beside her husband.

Pressure.

She did not crush the whole Gorger. She could not, not at F. She found the soft column of its throat, where Saffa’s ice had already numbed it, and she squeezed that one place closed.

It took a long time to die. Ainen held the binding the whole way, with sweat pouring off him, so that it could not lash out at anyone while it did.

When it finally lay still, he sat down on the ice.

"I’ll never get used to cooking like that," he said.

He took the tongue.

It was long and gray, and it was still warm. He held it in both hands, and closed his eyes, and thought about every table he had ever set.

Host.

It folded. It left an orb the deep brown color of fresh-baked crust.

[Power Orb: Open Table]

[Quality: E]

[Anyone who eats what you serve cannot raise a hand against your guests until the meal is done.]

His status changed.

[Life Rank: E]

Saffa leaned over his shoulder and read it.

"Until the meal is done," she said. "So you’ll just keep serving more courses."

"That’s the plan," Ainen said. "I’m a very slow cook when I want to be."

Big D took his party east, toward something Ainen had tasted the night before.

"It tastes like the end of a long day," Ainen had said. "Like falling into bed. I don’t like it."

It was a Wearer. Orla’s people knew them well. A Wearer ended strength. It did not chase. It found a spot near water and lay down, and everything that came close got tired. Then more tired. Then it lay down too, and the Wearer ate it.

"It’s the closest thing out here to a Lull," Orla said. "Only much smaller. If you want to test your friend, this is where you test him."

So Big D brought Silvester.

He also brought Kael, Noah, Kira, and three Asuras with spears. Hiroshi wanted to come too, with his shoulder strapped, and Big D told him no. Hiroshi said a number of things about that, and Big D still told him no.

They found it in a reed bed beside a pond. It was gray and low, like a heap of wet blankets. It did not even look up as they came near.

The tiredness hit them two hundred yards out.

It came on like a heavy coat. Noah slowed first. Then the Asuras. Kira stopped walking, blinked, and sat down very carefully in the grass, as though she had decided to rest for a moment.

"Kira," Noah said. His voice was thick. "Get up."

"In a minute," Kira said.

Kael made it another twenty yards, then dropped to one knee. "This is... much worse than it looks."

Big D kept walking.

Endure.

He could feel it pulling at him. It was like walking uphill through mud, with the hill getting steeper. It did not stop him. He had walked through worse for ten thousand years, and nobody had ever let him sit down.

Behind him, Silvester sagged to his knees.

He tried to push himself up and could not. His arms would not hold him. He lay down slowly on his side in the grass, the way a tired man lies down, and his eyes started to close.

Then they opened again.

Get Up.

He got up. It was not graceful. It looked as if somebody had grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. He stood there swaying, and blinking.

"Huh," he said. "It works on that too."

He took three steps and fell down again. Then he got up again.

"This is the worst power in the world," he said. "I keep falling over."

"You keep getting up," Big D said, without turning around. "That’s the part that matters. Keep doing it."

Big D killed the Wearer with his hands.

There was nothing clever about it. It lay in its reeds and pulled at him, and he walked up to it through the pull and put his hands on the heap of wet gray hide where something underneath was beating. Then he leaned his whole weight on it until it stopped.

The tiredness lifted like a blanket pulled off a bed.

Kira jerked awake in the grass. Noah stumbled to his feet. Kael rolled over onto his back and stared at the sky, breathing hard.

"I don’t think I’ve ever been that tired," he said. "And I’ve fought three of your family."

Big D cut out the thing that had been beating. It was hard and heavy, like a fist-sized stone.

Endure.

It folded into an orb the color of old iron.

[Power Orb: Unbowed]

[Quality: E]

[Nothing that tires the body can bring you down while you hold your ground.]

He looked at it for a moment with no expression at all. Then he closed his hand.

"Well," he said. "That’s about right."

Silvester had found a long strip of gray hide from the Wearer’s back. He was holding it and frowning.

"What’s yours going to be?" Noah asked.

"I don’t know." Silvester shrugged. "Let’s find out."

Get Up.

The strip of hide twisted and folded. The orb it left was small and pale gold, the color of the first light at dawn.

[Power Orb: Second Wind]

[Quality: F]

[When you rise, those beside you rise with you.]

Silvester read it once. Then he read it again, slowly, out loud.

"Those beside you," he said.

Big D turned around and looked at him for a long moment.

"Now that," he said, "is going to matter."

By the third evening, the camp had made eleven hundred orbs.

Marcus had the count. Most of them were F. Eighty-seven were E. Natalia had found a second Husher and turned its jaw into a mark that could be seen through walls. Maya had made an orb from a Strayer’s leg with Thread. Now she could tie forty people together on a line that could not be broken by anything short of cutting it.

The Empress of Skytheum had gone out hunting with Vess and come back with an E. She did not say what it did. Nobody pressed her.

John had gone out alone on the second day and come back at sunset, dragging something behind him.

It was a head. It was bigger than he was, and it had far too many eyes, and every one of them was closed. Orla took one look at it and sat down on the ground.

"That’s a D," she said. "That’s from the hills to the east. You don’t hunt those at F. You don’t hunt those at D."

"It was very rude to me," John said.

"What did you make from it?"

John smiled pleasantly. "I haven’t decided," he said, and he dragged the head away into the part of the camp where his own people were. Nobody saw it again.

Almond had made nothing new.

He had gone out every day. He had killed three Closers and a Strayer, and he had given every part away to whoever it fit. He still had only Quiet Edge.

"You need more than one," Lily said. They were sitting outside their small tent on the last night. "You’re walking into the worst thing in this region with one orb."

"I know," Almond said.

"So why?"

He was quiet for a while.

"Because nothing out here fits me yet," he said. "I’ve tried. Carry, Deny, Shared Ground. I held parts in my hands and nothing folded. I think whatever fits those is bigger than a Closer." He looked north, into the dark. "I think I’ll find it up there."

Lily did not say anything for a long time.

"You’re doing it again," she said finally. "Carrying all of it yourself."

"I’ve got Silvester this time. Second Wind."

"Silvester falls over every three steps."

"And gets up every three steps," Almond said. "Big D says that’s the part that matters."

Lily laughed in spite of herself. Then she leaned against his shoulder.

They chose the party that night.

Almond. Big D. Rudra, to hold the heading. Ainen, to taste the way. Marcus, to call people back. Silvester. Kael, who simply announced that he was coming and did not wait to be asked. Orla knew the ground. Hessa had lost a husband in it.

Natalia stood in front of Almond with her arms crossed until he gave in and added her name.

Lily stayed.

She was the one who said it, before anyone else could. "Someone has to hold this camp with an orb that can stop a fight. Hush does that. And I made a promise." She looked at Almond. "You’re coming back."

"I’m coming back."

"With sixty thousand beds."

"With sixty thousand beds."

The Empress of Skytheum stood beside Lily with her hands folded.

"I will help her hold it," the Empress said. "I have spent a long time keeping things standing. It is the one skill that seems to have come through the door with me."

They left at first light.

Ten people walked north across the gray grass. Behind them, the camp was waking up, and thirty-nine thousand people watched them go.

Hessa walked at the front beside Orla. She had not spoken since they left the stones. She was looking at a low green hill far to the north, the one she had stood on twenty years ago.

Silvester walked near the back with Big D. He was already practicing. Every hundred steps or so, he would let himself fall flat in the grass, and then he would get up.

"Is he going to do that the whole way?" Kael asked.

"Probably," Big D said.

"It’s very strange to watch."

Big D watched Silvester go down again, and get up again, and brush the grass off his knees.

"He’s been doing it his whole life," he said. "Now there’s just a name for it."