Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 871: The Quiet

John landed in the grass outside the wall and ran.

Almond had never seen him run. In all the years he had known John, through wars and calamities and the end of a world, John had walked.

He had walked into battles with his hands in his pockets. He had walked off the edge of the road into the nothing.

Now he ran. He ran across the north field like a boy.

"Big D," said Almond.

"Go," said Big D. He was already at the stairs. "Kael. Rudra."

Lily caught Almond’s sleeve at the top of the stairs.

"I’m staying," she said, before he could say it. "I’m staying right here, on this wall, where Hessa can see me. Go and get him."

Almond went.

The four of them came out through the north gate and over the white stones at a run. The field was gray with dawn. The great body of the Lull lay against the line where it had died, with its eye still open.

Far ahead, the old woman was almost at the tide.

She walked slowly. She did not look back. The Enders lying in the grass lifted their heads as she passed, and watched her, and did not touch her.

The man was waiting for her.

He stood at the front of the tide with his gray hands at his sides. As she came close, he crouched down in the grass so that his face was level with hers. He held out both hands. She put hers in them.

Almond was too far away to hear what they said. He saw the old woman talking. He saw the man listening, with his head bent.

Then John reached them.

He stopped ten steps away, breathing hard. The man looked up at him over the old woman’s shoulder. Slowly, still holding her hands, he stood.

Almond came up a few seconds behind, with Kael and Rudra and Big D. They stopped a little way behind John.

"...don’t need him," the old woman was saying. Her voice was thin and steady. "You said I was yours to look after. Then look after me. I’ll come. Leave Johnny be."

"I’d like you both," the man said gently.

"You can’t have both."

"I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I can have," he said. "I’ve found I can have most things, if I wait."

He let go of her hands. He looked at John, and then past John, at the four of them.

"Almond," he said. "Stay there, please."

Almond took another step.

"I’d rather not," the man said. "I like you. I like your town."

Almond took another step. Beside him, Kael took one too.

The man sighed.

He did not move. He did not lift his hands. But something came off him, the way cold comes off a block of ice.

It was gray and quiet and it did not look like anything. It went out across the grass in a ring, and when it touched Almond, everything in him went still.

It was not like the Lull. He was not tired. He was not asleep.

He only stopped wanting to go up.

All at once, every step he had ever climbed felt pointless. Every gate. Every door. Every rank on every board.

He had climbed out of the bottom world, and up through the middle plane, and up through the layers, and what for? There was always another door. There was always another fall waiting at the end of it.

Why go up at all?

He felt the orbs in his chest go cold, one after another.

[Quiet Edge: dormant]

[Unclosed: dormant]

[Life Rank: D → F]

Beside him, Kael had stopped in the middle of a step. Almond saw him try to go forward, and saw Quickstep fail under him. Kael stumbled and went down on one knee in the grass. His face was white.

"I can’t," Kael said. "It’s gone. Everything I made is gone."

Rudra was standing still with his hands at his sides. He looked down at his own palms as if he did not know what they were for.

Big D had sat down.

He sat in the grass with his book in his lap. He did not look tired. He looked like a man who had walked into a room and forgotten why.

"Ten thousand years," Big D said quietly. "Ten thousand years, and I’ve never once stopped. And it doesn’t feel like anything."

Almond went down on his knees.

The grass was wet. The sky was gray. He could see the white stones of Brightwater behind him, and the wall, and he knew Lily was on it.

He knew the child was there. He held on to that. It was the only thing in him that did not feel pointless.

He could not get up.

"Stop it," said John.

He was the only one of them still standing.

He stood in the middle of the quiet with his arms at his sides, breathing hard from the run. The gray had gone over him the same as it had gone over the rest of them.

But nothing in him had gone cold, because nothing in him was showing. His status had always been hidden. Whatever the man had ended, there had been nothing in John for it to find.

"Stop it," John said again. "They’re not climbing anywhere. They’re kneeling in a field."

The man looked at him.

"They’ll climb again tomorrow," the man said. "That’s the trouble with them, Johnny. They always get up."

"Then let them."

"So they can fall?" The man shook his head slowly.

"I watched them on the Shelf. I watched them on the road. I watched the Aurelians walk off alone into the grass because I told them to. Every one of those people was climbing toward something. And look where it took them."

"It took most of them home," said John. "You weren’t watching that part."

The man was quiet.

Then the gray went back into him, the way a tide goes out.

Almond felt it go. The cold left his chest. One by one, the orbs warmed again.

[Life Rank: F → D]

He got up off his knees. Kael got up beside him, shaking. Rudra put a hand down to Big D, and Big D took it and stood, and held the book against his chest with both arms.

Nobody said anything. Almond could not have spoken if he had tried.

The man looked at the four of them for a long moment. Then he looked back at John.

"That was only me standing here," he said. "That’s all I did. I didn’t reach for anything." He let the words sit.

"If I walk to the Door, Johnny, I’ll walk past every line on your road. I won’t try to go through them. I won’t need to. I’ll only walk past. And everyone inside will sit down in the grass, the way Big D did, and stop."

He looked south, toward the far Door.

"And then they’ll live there," he said. "They’ll eat, and sleep, and stay. They won’t climb anything ever again. That’s all. It isn’t death." His voice was gentle. "It’s only the end of going up."

John did not answer.

"Or," the man said, "you come with me. You walk beside the road where I can’t, and you help me close the Door from the inside."

He let that sit for a moment.

"And I’ll go the other way around every line. I won’t go near any of them. They can keep their climbing. Nobody new will ever come up to join them, that’s all."

The old woman had her hands over her mouth.

John looked down at the grass for a long time.

Then he looked back over his shoulder, at Almond.

Almond could not read his face. It was tired and calm and far away, the way it had been on the wall at midnight.

"You leave every line alone," John said, without turning back to the man. "Every one. The Door, Greywatch, the Aurelians, Emberfall, here, Westhollow. You don’t go within a mile of any of them."

"I don’t."

"And you don’t touch the road until I say."

The man smiled.

"Until you say," he agreed.

John turned around.

He walked back to Almond. He stopped in front of him and put both hands on Almond’s shoulders. His hands were cold.

"John," Almond said. "Don’t."

"Get to the Door before us," John said quietly. He said it so low that Almond barely heard it. "He doesn’t hurry. He never has. You’ve got days." He squeezed Almond’s shoulders once. "Tell Corvin to put the kettle on."

He stepped back before Almond could answer.

He looked at Big D.

"You’ve got my name," John said.

"I’ve got it," said Big D. His voice was rough.

"Keep it at the front."

Then John turned and walked back to the man and the old woman. He did not run this time. He put his hands in his pockets, and walked.

The man put a gray hand on John’s shoulder. The old woman took John’s arm. The three of them turned together and walked away along the edge of the tide, toward the west.

The tide rose up and went with them.

It went around Brightwater the long way, west and then south, miles out from the white stones. It went like a slow gray sea draining away. The Enders did not look back at the town. None of them came within a mile of the line.

By midmorning, the north field was empty except for the dead Lull.

Almond stood in the grass and watched the last of it go over the far hills. Big D stood beside him with the book against his chest.

"He’s walking to the Door," Almond said.

"He’s walking to the Door," said Big D.

"How long?"

Big D looked at the hills where the tide had gone.

"He’s never in a hurry," he said. "John said so." He turned back toward the town. "But we are."