Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 836: What The Empress Carried

The Empress came to find them after midnight.

Almond and Lily were on the roof of the half-ruined tower again. It had become their place. From up there they could see the whole city, and the glowing ring of white stones, and the little shoot in the square below.

They heard her on the stairs before they saw her. She climbed slowly, the way a person climbs when they have been deciding the whole way up whether to turn back.

She stepped out onto the roof and stood there in her plain gray travel clothes.

"I heard you were up here," she said. "I hope I’m not intruding."

"You’re not," Lily said.

The Empress came and sat down on the broken edge of the wall across from them. For a long moment she said nothing at all. Then she reached into her pocket and took out what was in it.

It was a seed.

It was much bigger than Corvin’s. It was the size of a closed fist, round and smooth, and it was gold. Not the cold gold of coins. It was the warm gold of late afternoon light. When she held it up, it shone, and the shine moved inside it like clouds moving across a sky.

Almond and Lily stared at it.

"Skytheum," the Empress said. "Our capital. Our halls. The high gardens. The great dome where every ruler of Skytheum was crowned." She turned it slowly in her fingers. "I found it in my pocket on the first morning. I’ve been carrying it ever since."

"You didn’t say anything," Almond said.

"No."

"Why not?"

The Empress looked down at the gold seed for a long time before she answered.

"Because I know what it is," she said. "I knew the moment I touched it. It is the largest home on the layer above. Bigger than Frosthold. Bigger than yours. When I plant it, the line it makes will be enormous." She paused. "And Skytheum will be first again."

Lily tilted her head. "Is that bad?"

"It is the only thing I was ever afraid of." The Empress’s voice was very quiet. "I told you at the Shelf. Being first means nobody stands beside you. I spent my whole life at the top of a layer, alone, and I walked through that Door so I would not be alone anymore."

She closed her hand around the seed. The gold light leaked out between her fingers.

"If I plant this, my people will have their own city. A better one than this, maybe. And they will go and live in it. And I will be the Empress of the first sanctuary on this layer, and everyone will look up at me again." She shook her head. "I didn’t want to find out how that felt."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Down in the square, a few people were still sitting by the little shoot, talking quietly. Somewhere a child was laughing.

"Then plant it next to ours," Lily said.

The Empress looked up.

"Right next to ours," Lily said. "Outside the south gate. Close enough that the lines nearly touch. Then you’re not first. You’re beside."

"Can two lines touch?"

"I don’t know," Lily said. "Nobody here has ever tried it. But Big D woke up an old line by planting ours inside it. Maybe a new one beside it does something too."

The Empress looked at the seed in her hand. Then she looked at Lily, and at Almond.

"You’d want that?" she asked. "Skytheum on your doorstep. Nine thousand of my people, and whatever Skytheum becomes out here, right beside you. For good."

"We walked through a door together," Almond said. "You carried your empire across on your back the whole way. I watched you do it." He shrugged. "I’d want that."

The Empress let out a long, slow breath.

"Corvin plants his seed at the Door," she said. "In five days. I want to see it first. I want to see how a seed becomes a line before I put my whole city in the ground." She put the gold seed back in her pocket, carefully. "Then I’ll come back. And I’ll plant it wherever you tell me."

She stood up to go. At the top of the stairs she stopped and looked back.

"I’m not going to hide it anymore," she said. "I’m sorry I did."

"You were scared," Lily said. "So are we. All the time."

The Empress almost smiled.

"Yes," she said. "I’m beginning to see that’s how you do it."

The march back to the Door took five days.

All of Frosthold went. Eleven thousand people who had only just found somewhere safe turned around and walked south again, back into the grass. Nobody complained. Corvin had told them why, standing in the square with his frozen arm in its sling, and that had been enough.

"We’re going to keep a light on," he had said. "For the ones who come after. Because nobody kept one on for us."

Big D walked with them. So did Rudra, Natalia, Kael and Hessa, and two hundred Regalon hunters with orbs. The Empress came with Vess.

John came too. Corvin had insisted.

"I want you where I can see you," Corvin said, on the first morning.

"You can see me," John said. "I’m right here."

"Stay there."

"I’m not going anywhere."

"Good."

By the third day, Corvin could move two fingers on his frozen hand. He showed them to Big D every few hours, as if Big D might have forgotten since the last time.

"Two," Corvin said.

"I saw," said Big D.

"Kayla said a month. It’s been a week."

"I know."

"I heal faster than she thought."

"You’re very stubborn," Big D said. "That’s different from healing."

They reached the Door on the evening of the fifth day.

It stood against the red sky, taller than a mountain. At its foot, behind its three small stone walls, Ainen’s fire was still burning. Nobody had fed it in weeks. Hearth had kept it alive.

The Enders were waiting.

They had gathered around the Door in the days since Frosthold left. They had felt it open twice now, and they had learned that things came out of it. There were Closers in the grass, and two Strayers, and a pack of Hushers sitting in a ring around the fire as if they were waiting for it to hatch.

"Thirty," Natalia said. She was marking them as she counted. "Maybe forty. And they’ve seen us."

"Clear it," Big D said. "We need the ground by the fire."

It was not a long fight.

Two weeks ago, it would have been. But the Regalon hunters had orbs now, and they had learned how to use them. They moved in parties tied on Thread, and they did not panic when the silence came down.

Natalia’s marks lit up every Ender in the field. Rudra held True Heading so the Strayers could not turn anyone. Kael took the Closers one by one, six steps at a time.

Hessa watched the whole field with her orb, and Marcus was not there to carry her voice. So she shouted instead, and it was enough.

The boy Ivar stood in the middle of Frosthold’s front line with his Dark Lamp ready. When one of the Hushers took all sound out of the air, he did not run. He planted his feet and held up his empty hand, the way he had seen Big D do, and the Frosthold soldiers around him held their ground beside him.

Corvin fought with one arm. He was not fast, and he was not graceful. But he was very, very angry, and the Hushers learned that quickly.

John did not fight at all. He stood at the back with his hands in his pockets and watched.

Twice, an Ender came toward him. Both times, it stopped a few yards away, turned around, and went to find someone else. Big D saw it happen the second time. He did not say anything. But he watched John for a long time afterward.

When the last Husher fell, the sun had gone down.

The field was quiet. Corvin walked through the dead Enders to the foot of the great Door, where Ainen’s fire burned behind its three stone walls. He stood there for a long time with his good hand inside his furs.

Then he knelt.

He did it slowly, because his knees were old and his arm was frozen. Big D came and stood beside him and did not offer to help. Corvin would not have wanted it.

He took out the blue-white seed. Frost spread over his fingers.

"Frosthold," he said quietly.

He was not speaking to anyone in the field. He was speaking to the seed.

"You were cold, and you were hard, and you were never anyone’s idea of a pleasant place to live," he said. "But nobody ever broke your walls. Not in all the years I kept you." His voice roughened. "So be that here. Be cold and hard, and don’t let anything through. Not for us. For whoever walks out of that Door next, and doesn’t know where they are."

He dug a small hole beside the fire with his fingers. He put the seed in it and covered it over.

Then he took his hand away and sat back on his heels.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground went cold.

It started under Corvin’s knees and spread out from there. Frost raced across the grass in every direction. It went white in a wide, perfect circle around the fire and the Door. It was as wide as Greywatch’s line, then wider, then wider still.

At the edge of the circle, the ground cracked.

White stones pushed up through the frost. They came one after another, each as tall as a child and set a few paces from the next, rising out of the earth with a sound like ice breaking on a river. They ran all the way around the circle. When the last one rose, it closed the ring with the Door inside it.

Every stone was covered in frost. The patterns on them looked like the high walls of a city.

In the middle, beside Ainen’s fire, a single shoot had come up out of the frozen ground. It was pale blue, and it looked as if it were made of ice. When the firelight touched it, it shone.

Out in the dark grass, beyond the ring, something howled. A pair of Closers had been creeping back toward the Door. They came to the line of frosted stones, and they stopped as if they had walked into a wall.

They paced along it. They did not cross.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Corvin knelt beside the ice-blue shoot with his good hand resting on the frozen ground. Big D stood beside him. Behind them, eleven thousand people from Frosthold were standing in the frost and staring at the ring of stones around them.

"It worked," Natalia whispered.

"It worked," said Rudra.

Hessa was crying, quietly, the way she did everything. She did not seem to notice.

The Empress stood at the back of the crowd with Vess. She had her hand in her pocket. She was looking at the white stones, and the shoot, and the old king kneeling beside it.

"Well?" Vess asked her softly.

"Brightwater," the Empress said. "Outside the south gate. Close enough to touch." She took her hand out of her pocket. It was empty, and she was smiling. "I’m done being afraid of it."

Big D finally offered Corvin a hand.

Corvin looked at it for a moment. Then he took it, with his good hand, and let Big D pull him to his feet.

"How does it feel?" Big D asked.

Corvin looked around at the ring of frosted stones. At his people standing inside it, safe. At the great Door rising above them all, with a fire burning at its foot.

"Like home," he said gruffly. "Cold. Uncomfortable. Mine."

Big D nodded slowly. "That’s about right."

John had come up behind them without either of them hearing. He was looking at the ice-blue shoot.

"It’s a good line," he said. "Strong. Corvin, I mean that."

Corvin opened his mouth, probably to tell him to go away.

He never got the chance.

Above them, the great Door began to shine.

It started at the top, far out of sight, and came down the whole height of it like a sunrise running down a mountain. The gap in the Door grew wider. Light poured out through it, in the color nobody had a name for.

Every head in the ring turned toward it.

"Someone’s coming through," Hessa said.

Corvin let go of Big D’s hand. He straightened his back and squared his shoulders, frozen arm and all. Then he walked to the foot of the Door, right beside the fire, and planted his feet.

"Then let them come," he said. "There’s somebody here to meet them this time."