Chapter 140: Decision

"Senior." Isolde knelt on the grass beside him. "It took your world."

"It did."

Garen crouched down to his level. "You told us what it was like down there, and you told us what it cost you." His voice was rough. "And you want to walk back into it."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Rishin looked down at the grass. Vina was still squatting in front of him with her chin in her hands, and he did not look at her.

"Because I left something unfinished down there," he said. "That is all any of you get for now. Ask me again somewhere deeper than this garden."

Logan knew better than to push.

He had spent three days on a mountain with this man, and he had learned that Rishin answered exactly the questions he meant to answer. Anything else went unanswered, however the question was phrased.

’He told me on that mountain what it did to his world,’ Logan thought. ’He went through it and came out the other side a Tier-11. The announcement said players who win in the Abysslon can ascend, so he won.’

He looked at the old man sweating on his parents’ lawn.

’Nobody who won something talks about going back to it with red eyes.’

Daniel offered him a hand up.

He came across the grass and held out his hand without making anything of it.

Rishin looked at the hand. Then he took it and let Daniel pull him to his feet.

"Your knees," Daniel said.

"Old."

"Mine were worse than that, once." Daniel kept hold of his elbow until he was steady. "Alice’s parents had their healers fix them. I can ask."

Rishin laughed. It came out short and rusty, and Isolde’s eyebrows went up. She had never heard that sound from him either.

Helen did not ask anyone’s permission.

She steered Rishin to the long table Winsmoke had set up under the trees, sat him down, and put a full plate in front of him.

"You came all this way," she said. "You are eating before anybody says one more word about abysses."

"Madam, I am not hungry."

"You are sweating and your hands are shaking." Helen pushed a fork toward him. "I raised a boy who always said he was not hungry. I know what it looks like."

Logan studied the grass and pretended he had not heard that.

Rishin picked up the fork. He ate slowly and carefully, and after a few bites his hands steadied. Winsmoke hovered at the edge of the table and watched every forkful go down.

"It is good," Rishin told him.

Winsmoke’s hull gave off a pleased little puff of steam, and he retreated to his kitchen looking about ten centimeters taller.

They ended up around the table because there was nowhere else to have the conversation.

Alice started it. She had been running the same problem in her head since the voice faded, and every version of it came out the same.

"Mother," she said. "You and Father are going in."

Isolde did not deny it.

Garen set his cup down. "We have waited our whole lives for Floor Ten to open," he said. "Every Tier-9 player on Earth has. That was true before today."

"And now?"

"Now our senior has just made himself Tier-1," Isolde said quietly. "He is going in whether we come or not."

"He asked us for one thing in all the years we have known him, and we did it without asking why."

She looked at Rishin across the table.

"We are not letting him walk into that place with an old man’s knees and nobody at his back."

"I did not ask you to come," Rishin said.

"No, Senior," Isolde said. "You never ask for anything. That is how we know this matters."

Alice had known what her mother would say. Hearing it out loud still made her grip the edge of the table.

’If Mother goes in, the pull takes Father and me with her. It takes me because I love her and she loves me, and there is nothing I could do to stop that.’

’It does not take Logan, because it does not chain.’

She looked across the table at him. He was already looking back, and she could see he had followed the same chain of names to the same end.

"Then I go in after you," Logan said.

"I know you would."

"And when I go in, the pull takes my family." He did not look at his sister, but everyone else at the table did. "All of them."

Helen’s hand found Daniel’s under the table.

"It is worse than that," Rishin said.

He had finished eating. He folded his hands on the table in front of him, and he looked like the man on the pond again, still and certain.

"The Abyss is larger than this planet. Larger than any planet I have seen. Those who are pulled in arrive beside the one who pulled them, but those who walk in separately arrive wherever the Abyss decides to put them."

"Separate towns," Alice said.

"If you are fortunate." Rishin looked at each of them in turn. "I have known people who walked in one after another to find each other. Some of them spent everything they had searching the rim and never saw their families again."

Logan went through it once more and found no way around it.

’Going in apart is the worst thing we could possibly do. Isolde first and me after her, and we could land on opposite sides of something bigger than a world.’

’The only way to be sure we stay together is to go in together.’

"No," Helen said.

She kept her voice level, but her knuckles had gone white around Daniel’s hand. "She is a child. She cannot even become a player. You are talking about taking a child into that."

She was right. Garen looked down into his cup.

"Are you all going to keep talking about me like I am not standing right here?"

Helen twisted around in her chair.

Vina was standing at the end of the table with her fists clenched at her sides. She had heard all of it. Her face was pale, but she was not crying.

’She is not a little kid anymore,’ Logan thought, and felt stupid for treating her like one. ’She has always understood more than we told her.’

"I am scared," Vina said. "Okay? I am really scared."

"Sweetheart," Helen started.

"But I would be more scared here by myself if all of you went in." Her voice wobbled and she pushed through it. "And Billy and Solveig already started teaching me how to fight."

"She is very bad at it," Billy said helpfully from the grass.

"She is improving," Solveig said, and gave Billy a look that shut him up.

Helen turned to Rishin. He was the only person at the table who could answer her.

"Tell me the truth," she said. "Can a child survive down there?"

Rishin looked at Vina with the same softened face Logan had seen at the hut, the one that saw somebody else standing behind her.

"I once saw a child walk further into the Abyss than anyone believed she could," he said. "Further than most of the grown players who walked beside her."

Helen’s fingers tightened around Daniel’s. "Did she come back out?"

Rishin looked down at his folded hands and did not answer.

Helen did not ask a second time.

"Then we go together," Daniel said. "All of us. Through the same door and at the same moment, so nobody ends up anywhere alone."

He looked at Helen, and she closed her eyes and nodded once.

"But not yet," Garen said firmly. "Nobody walks through that door until Helen and Daniel can hold their own. Vina goes in with everything we can possibly put on her."

"Good," Rishin said. "The Abyss is patient. You should learn to be patient before you get there, because it will not teach you gently."

Logan turned to him. "Will you teach us?"

"Somebody has to." Rishin rose from the table, slower than he would have liked. "I have walked the rim before, and I know what is waiting past it. I cannot carry you anymore, boy. But I can tell you where not to step."

Helen had already decided where he was sleeping, and Rishin knew better than to argue.

Vina took his hand to show him the house, and he let her pull him across the lawn at her pace.

She had no idea she was leading a man who had been one of the strongest players alive until he ate a crystal on her family’s lawn.

Logan watched them go. Alice came and stood beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched.

"Abysslon longs for love," she said quietly.

"I know."

Alice looked at the table full of people she could not stand to lose.

’And we are all about to walk into it carrying every bit of ours.’