Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 869: Awake

Nobody said anything for a while.

John stood on the wall with his hands at his sides. He did not put them back in his pockets. The old woman stood at the top of the stairs and did not come any closer.

Then the Lull breathed out again, and there was no more time.

The heaviness rolled over the wall. Almond felt it press behind his eyes like two thumbs. Unclosed held. Beside him, Silvester’s knees sagged, and Almond held on to his arm and carried him through it.

"Up!" Silvester shouted.

Down in the streets, the town got up again. Fewer, this time. Almond saw a woman in a doorway try to stand, and slide back down, and stay there.

"That’s four," Silvester said. His voice was hoarse. "I’ve got nine more in me. Ten, if I’m lucky."

"It’s not going to run out of breath," said Big D.

He had come up the stairs behind them. He stood at the parapet and looked out at the great gray shape curled in the north field.

The tide had stopped behind it. Thousands of Enders stood or crouched or lay in the grass, a quarter mile back, and waited.

"They’re not attacking," said Kael.

"They don’t need to." Big D’s rasp was flat. "Look at it. It lies there and breathes. Everybody in here sleeps. Nobody wakes up." He nodded at the white stones. "Then nobody’s home. And when nobody’s home, the line forgets what it’s for."

"Westhollow," Almond said.

"Westhollow. The stones go dark. Then that lot walks in." Big D looked at the tide. "They’re waiting for the Lull to finish the job."

The old woman spoke from the stairs.

"He said the Lulls were his favorites," she said quietly. "He said they were the kindest. They never hurt anyone. They only let people rest."

Nobody answered that.

Almond looked out at the Lull.

He had killed one of these before. It had taken all of them. They had fed it and cut it and climbed it, and in the end Big D had pulled its heart out with his bare hands.

And that one had been smaller. That one had been alone, with no tide behind it.

He looked down at his hand, at the place where the orb sat.

Unclosed.

He had made it from the first Lull’s eyelid. Nothing can close your eyes. He had carried it to Silvester, and to Lily, and to every one of them on the wall.

"Big D," he said slowly. "What happens to a Lull if it can’t close its eyes?"

Big D turned and looked at him.

"It ends waking," Almond said. "That’s what it does. It sleeps, and everything near it sleeps with it. But what if it couldn’t? What if it had to stay awake?"

Kael had gone still beside him.

"You’d have to touch it," Kael said. "Carry doesn’t reach a mile."

"No."

"You’d have to walk a mile out across that field, through the sleep, with that lot watching." Kael nodded at the tide. "And get to its eye."

"Yes."

"And if it works," said Rudra, "you’ve got a Lull the size of a river, wide awake, for the first time in its life. Right beside you."

"Yes," said Almond.

Lily was holding his hand. She had not let go of it since the first breath. She did not let go now.

"Who goes with you?" she asked.

"Nobody I can’t carry."

"How many can you carry?"

Almond thought about it honestly.

"Silvester has to stay. If he goes, the town doesn’t wake." He looked around the wall. "Kael. Big D. Rudra. Natalia, to find the eye." He paused. "Four. Maybe five, out there, with it breathing on us."

"And me," said Lily.

"No."

"I’m not asking to go." Her hand tightened in his. "I’m asking who keeps my eyes open when you’re gone."

Almond had not thought of that.

He looked at Silvester. Silvester was holding on to the parapet. His face was gray with tiredness.

"I’ll carry her," Silvester said. "When I get up, she gets up. That’s what the orb does." He looked at Lily. "I’ll get up as many times as it takes. You can hold my arm."

Lily looked at Almond. Then she let go of his hand, and took Silvester’s arm instead.

"Come back," she said. "I mean it."

"I know you do," said Almond.

They went out through the north gate between breaths.

Almond went first, with Natalia’s hand on his left shoulder and Kael’s on his right. Big D came behind Kael. Rudra came last, with one hand on Big D’s back. They walked in a tight knot, all of them touching someone who touched Almond.

Carry.

The sleep came over the field like warm water. With every step toward the Lull, it got deeper. Almond felt it pull at his eyelids. He felt it pull at the others through his hands, and he held on.

Halfway across the field, the dreams came.

He saw Lily. She was standing in the grass in front of him, in the sun, with her hand on her stomach. She was smiling. She held out her other hand to him.

"Come and sit down," she said. "You’ve done enough. Come and sit with us."

Almond walked through her.

She was not there. He knew she was not there. But it was harder than anything he had done that day.

Behind him, Kael made a sound in his throat. Almond did not ask what Kael was seeing. Big D was saying something under his breath, the same few words over and over. It sounded like a list of names.

The Lull breathed out.

The weight came down on them like a roof falling. Almond’s knees bent. Rudra went down on one knee in the grass, and Almond felt him start to go, felt his hand slipping off Big D’s back.

Unclosed. Carry.

He held on to all of them as hard as he could.

Rudra got up. Behind them, faint across the field, Almond heard Silvester’s voice from the wall.

"Up!"

They kept walking.

The Lull’s head was the size of a house. They came up to it from the side, where it rested on its own tail.

Its fur was gray and soft and thick, and it moved slowly in the wind. Its eye was closed. The lid was as long as a man.

"Natalia," said Almond.

Mark.

A thin red line ran along the edge of the eyelid, from corner to corner. Natalia’s hand was shaking on his shoulder.

"There," she said. "That’s where it opens. If it can open."

Almond let go of Kael and Natalia. He kept his hand on Big D, who kept his hand on Rudra. He reached up with his free hand and laid it flat against the closed eyelid of the Lull.

It was warm. Under his palm, the eye moved, the way an eye moves in a dream.

Carry.

Unclosed.

He gave it to the Lull.

The eyelid opened.

It did not open slowly. It flew up, like a shutter blown open in a storm, and behind it was an eye as big as a cart wheel. It was gray and wet and had never once looked at the world awake.

It looked at Almond now.

The sleep stopped.

It stopped all at once. Almond felt the weight go off his eyes and off his shoulders and off the whole field.

Behind him, a mile away, he heard a sound rise up from Brightwater. It was thousands of voices at once, people sitting up in the streets and shouting and calling to each other.

The Lull lifted its head.

It lifted it slowly, a house-sized head on a neck as thick as a tower. It looked around at the field, at the sky, at the tide behind it. Its great gray eye stared at everything, and it could not close.

Then it screamed.

It was a high, enormous, terrible sound, like a child woken from a nightmare. The whole field shook with it. The tide of Enders behind it shrank back.

"Move!" Big D roared.

The Lull uncurled.

Its whole body came up off the grass in one heave. Its tail swung around and went over their heads and came down where they had been standing a second before.

The ground jumped under Almond’s feet. The great head swung toward the town, toward the white stones, toward the thousands of shouting voices.

It charged.

It did not walk now. It ran, a body longer than the town wall, straight at Brightwater’s north wall. It ran the way a frightened animal runs, blind and huge and not looking where it was going.

"It can’t cross the line," Rudra panted. "It can’t..."

"It doesn’t know that," said Kael.

The Lull hit the line.

It hit the white stones at full speed, and the line held, and the Lull did not. It slammed into nothing at all, and stopped dead, and its whole long body folded up behind it. The noise of it hitting was like a mountain falling over.

It lay against the stones, stunned. Its great eye still stared open.

"Natalia," said Kael. "The heart."

Mark.

A red light glowed through the gray fur, high on the Lull’s chest, under its front leg.

"There," said Natalia.

Kael looked at it. Then he looked at the eye.

"Almond," he said. "Cut it. The eyelid. Again."

Almond did not ask why. He ran to the Lull’s head where it lay against the stones.

Quiet Edge. Sever.

His cut went along the open eyelid, where Natalia’s first mark had been. The lid split. The Lull jerked, and screamed again, and tried to lift its head.

Kael was already moving.

Quickstep.

He crossed the distance in six steps. He went up the Lull’s face like a man going up a flight of stairs. He planted his feet at the edge of the split eyelid.

Shatterpoint.

Strike a thing where it has broken once before, and it breaks again.

He drove his sword down into the cut.

It broke again. It broke deeper than Almond’s cut had gone. The break ran from the eyelid back into the skull, and from the skull down the neck, and from the neck along the whole body, all the way down to the red-marked place under the front leg.

The Lull shuddered once along its whole length.

Then it was still.

Its eye stayed open. It would never close now.

Up on the wall, the shouting turned into something else. It was a roar, ragged and huge, from forty thousand throats.

Kael climbed down off the Lull’s face and sat in the grass. His sword arm was shaking.

"Shatterpoint," he said. "I knew it would be good for something."

Big D was not cheering. He was looking past the Lull, past the field, at the tide.

The Enders had pulled back when the Lull screamed. Now they stood in the grass, thousands of them, a quarter mile out, and did not come on. They were all facing the same way.

They were facing the back of the tide.

Almond looked where they were looking.

There was a man walking forward through them.

He came slowly. The Enders moved out of his way as he came, the way grass bends out of the way of the wind. He was too far to see clearly. Almond could see that he was tall, and gray, and that his edges were not quite still.

He stopped at the front of the tide, a quarter mile from the dead Lull.

He looked at it for a long time. Then he looked up, past it, at the north wall of Brightwater.

He was not looking at Almond. Almond knew that without knowing how.

He was looking at John.

Then, slowly, he took his hands out of his pockets.