Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 873: Onto the Road

"How long?" Big D asked.

The small gold gatekeeper looked up at the Door. The line of light down its middle was thinner than a finger now. It was still narrowing, slowly, the way a door closes in a draft.

"Until morning," it said. "Perhaps less. He is gentle. He is not pushing. He is only leaning." Its small voice shook. "But he is heavy."

"Can you stop him?"

"I am the road. He is standing beside it, where I cannot see or reach." The one old eye looked up at Ainen. "I can only feel his hand."

Corvin put the kettle down on the grass.

"Then somebody goes in," he said. "Same as Duskspire. I’ll hold the belt."

"Whose belt?" said Big D. "John’s on the other side."

Corvin opened his mouth, and shut it again.

Nobody else could walk in the nothing. They all knew it. John had walked them down to the heart. John had walked them out to the old woman. Every time anyone had gone past the edge of that road, it had been John’s feet they stood on.

"We don’t go beside it," said Ainen.

Everyone looked at him.

"We go on it." He was kneeling by the small gatekeeper. "You said once that I’m your host. That you’d carry me as far as your thread would go."

He held out his hand. "Can you carry me onto your road? Not beside it. Onto it. Back to the gap, from this side."

The gatekeeper was quiet for a long moment.

"No one walks back up my road," it said. "It goes one way."

"I’m not asking to walk back up it. I’m asking to stand at the end of it. Right at the gap." Ainen did not lower his hand. "Close enough to talk to someone standing beside it."

The gatekeeper looked at his open hand.

"I can carry my host," it said slowly. "And those who are holding on to my host. But I cannot carry many, and I cannot hold you there long. Not while he leans on me."

"How many?"

"Three. Perhaps four."

"Me," said Ainen. "That’s one."

"Me," said Almond.

"And me," said Lily.

Almond turned around.

She was standing behind him with Kayla at her shoulder. She did not look angry. She did not look afraid. She looked the way she had looked on the tower at Brightwater, the night she told him about the child.

"No," Almond said.

"Yes."

"Lily, it’s the nothing. It’s the road. If something happens..."

"Something is happening." Lily put her hand flat on her stomach. "Almond, he took everything off my status yesterday. Everything I ever made. And the baby’s line didn’t move."

"I know."

"He thinks nobody makes it." Her voice was steady. "He thinks you climb, and you fall, and that’s all there is. He said so. And I’m carrying someone who came through that road without climbing one step."

She looked up at the narrowing light. "I want him to see it."

Almond looked at Kayla.

Kayla had her hand on Lily’s back. She looked at Almond for a long time.

"Both fine," she said. "That’s all I know. I can’t tell you if it’s safe. Nobody can." She took her hand away. "But I know her. And I know she’s not going to sit at a fire while you go."

"I’m not," said Lily.

Big D stepped forward.

"Four," he said to the gatekeeper. "You said four. Lily holds Ainen. Almond holds Lily. I hold Almond, and I don’t let go."

"Big D..."

"I’ve held on to worse," said Big D.

Corvin snorted.

"And I hold Big D," he said. "From out here. With the whole ring behind me if I need it. Same as Duskspire." He jerked his head at the Frosthold soldiers by the fire. "If the gold thing drops you, you’ll have eleven thousand people pulling."

The gatekeeper looked at Corvin. Then it looked at the chain of them.

"Hold on," it said. "Do not let go. Whatever you hear."

Ainen put his hand on its small gold back.

Open Door.

The light took them.

It was the road.

Almond knew it at once, the pale line of it running away into the dark, the nothing pressing in on both sides. But it was different from the crossing. On the crossing, the road had gone forward forever, toward a gap far ahead.

Now the gap was right behind them. He could feel it at his back, like a warm doorway. Beyond it was the frosted grass and the firelight and Corvin’s hand, fisted in Big D’s belt.

And the road was dim.

All along its edge, as far as he could see, its light had gone thin and gray. It flickered like a candle in a draft.

"There," Ainen whispered.

They were standing beside the road. They stood a few steps out, on nothing, in the dark. Almond could see them clearly. They were lit by the dim gray light of the road itself.

John stood with his hands in his pockets.

The old woman sat beside him on the nothing, with her legs folded under her and her empty bag in her lap. She was not looking at the road. She was looking at the man.

He was crouched at the edge of the dark, beside the road, with one gray hand laid flat against its edge. His head was bowed.

His crawling gray edges moved slowly in the light. He did not push. He only leaned, the way a man leans on a gate he has been waiting at for a long time.

Where his hand lay, the road was going out.

John saw them first.

He did not move. His face did not change much. But Almond saw his shoulders drop a little, as if something heavy had been taken off them.

"Took you long enough," John said.

The man looked up.

He looked at Ainen, holding the gatekeeper’s golden back. He looked at Lily, and Almond, and Big D. He looked at Corvin’s white fist, stretching back through the gap.

"You came onto my road," he said. He sounded surprised. "From the wrong end."

"It isn’t your road," said Ainen.

"No," the man agreed. "Not yet."

He did not take his hand off it.

"John," Almond said. "You said not until you said."

"I haven’t said," said John. "He did it anyway."

"I’m sorry, Johnny." The man’s warm voice was tired. "I waited until you slept. You always did sleep, eventually. Even on the worst nights."

The old woman made a small sound in her throat. The man did not look at her.

"You promised him," the old woman said. "I heard you. In the field."

"I promised a lot of people a lot of things," the man said. "On a lot of nights. You were there for most of them."

"You kept most of them."

"I kept none of them." He bent his head lower. "Not one. Every one of you fell."

"Johnny didn’t."

The man was quiet. His hand stayed where it was.

Big D spoke from the back of the chain. His rasp was flat and steady.

"I’ve got a book full of names," he said. "People who crossed this road carrying each other. Thirty-one thousand from my family alone. You want to know how many I had to write in the back?"

The man did not look up.

"None," said Big D. "Not one."

"Take your hand off it," said Lily.

The man looked at her for a long moment. Then he shook his head, gently.

"I’m sorry," he said. "You came a long way. But you’re standing on the last road anyone will ever need to climb, and I’m going to close it."

Then he let the quiet out.

It came across the edge of the road like cold air through a window. Almond felt it hit him, and everything he had ever made went still.

[Quiet Edge: dormant]

[Unclosed: dormant]

[Life Rank: D → F]

His knees went. He went down on the road. Big D’s hand stayed fisted in the back of his coat, but Big D was going down too. Almond heard him hit the road behind him.

Ainen sat down with his hand on the gatekeeper. The small gold thing flickered under his palm.

Almond felt the pointlessness come over him again. Every step he had ever climbed. Every door. He looked at the dim road under his hands, and could not remember why anyone had ever wanted to walk along it.

Lily had gone down on her knees beside him.

He turned his head and looked at her. Her face was gray. Her eyes were wet. But she was looking straight at the man.

"Look," she said.

The man looked at her.

Lily lifted her hand. She did not lift it to him. She held it up, open, in the air in front of her own face, where her status would be.

She showed it to him.

Almond saw it too. He saw her name, and her weight, and every line beneath them gone dull and gray. Silence. Threshold. Shelter. Unname. Hush. Turnback. Her rank.

And under all of it, one line.

[Name: not yet given]

[Soul Weight: 4]

It was not gray. It was lit, soft and steady, like a lamp in a window.

The man’s hand moved on the road.

He leaned closer to the edge, as if he could not see it properly from where he was. For the first time since Almond had seen him, he looked unsure.

"What is that?" he said.