Chapter 249: The Last Gate

Logan woke before the others and lay listening.

There was no sound on the empty floor except the slow hum of Billy’s rim beside him and the soft breathing of the people he loved. Link’s flame burned low over the camp. Past its edge, the dark went on in every direction.

Rishin was sitting where he had sat down. Nell lay asleep against his side, one hand clenched in his coat. Saya sat on his other side, awake, with her knees drawn up and her eyes on the dark ahead.

She saw Logan looking. She did not look away.

Her hand moved, one small shape. He did not know what it meant. But he understood the way she nodded afterward, toward her husband, and then back at Logan.

’Watch him,’ he thought. ’That is what she is saying.’

He nodded back.

They walked on after they had eaten.

Nell kept to her father’s side, gripping his coat. Saya walked ahead of him with Vina, and neither of them let go of the other. Helen walked close behind Vina. Logan noticed she never once let more than an arm’s length open between them.

The floor did not change. It went on flat and dark and smooth under their feet, and the lit well of the kept fell farther and farther behind them, until it was only a faint glow at their backs.

Then Sonic came down out of the dark so fast that Halden ducked.

"Boss!" he said. "A wall. There is a wall ahead. And there is a door in it."

Logan saw the wall long before they reached it.

It loomed up ahead of them, black and sheer. It went up past the reach of Link’s flame, and it ran away to either side farther than Logan could see. It looked like the end of the world.

The gate was in the middle of it.

It was an arch, the same as the gates on the path. But this one was vast. Hob could have walked through it with Halden standing on his back and Terry on Halden’s shoulders, and still not touched the top.

There was no curtain inside it. There was only a deep, quiet darkness. Far back inside it burned a single point of light.

It was not pale like the kept. It was warm and gold.

"That is the way out," said Rishin.

He had stopped walking. Saya had halted a step ahead of him with Vina, and Nell had stopped at his side. The rest of the family stood behind them.

"Through that," the old man said. "To the end. Whoever reaches it ascends. And the Abyss does not come up into your world."

Garen blew out hard through his nose.

"Then that is it," he said. "That is the bottom of everything."

"Yes."

Logan looked down at the stone before the gate.

It was not smooth here. It was scored and scratched across its whole width, deep pale lines cut into the dark stone in every direction. They looked like the marks a hand makes when it is dragged across the ground, if the hand was as large as a cart and had a great many fingers.

Nell had seen them too.

She had gone white. Her fist was so tight in her father’s coat that the cloth had bunched up under her knuckles.

"I remember the hands," she whispered.

Saya’s free hand had gone to her mouth.

Rishin did not look at the marks. He looked at the gate.

"The last asking is here," he said. "There is no curtain, because there is no need of one. It asks for one person. And when the one it asks for is given, its warden takes them back to the floor among the kept."

His voice stayed even.

"It took Saya out of my hands," he said. "And then Nell. It carried them back across the floor to where you found them. I went through the gate alone."

The panel opened as he finished speaking.

[ The Last Gate ] [ The way out asks. ] [ Asked: one person ]

Logan read it.

It did not name anyone. It hung in the air in front of the vast dark arch, and it waited.

Beside him, Alice had gone rigid. Her eyes were not on the panel. They were on the old man. Logan saw her shift her weight onto the balls of her feet, ready to move.

He did the same.

Then the scored stone moved.

It did not crack or open. The scratches in the stone rose up out of it, pale and thin, as if they had been lying flat under the surface all along. They rose like grass, and then like reeds, and then like the arms of a crowd lifted all together.

They were arms.

There were hundreds of them. They were pale and thin, with no bodies under them. They rose out of the floor and twisted together as they rose, grey fingers knotting round grey wrists, until they had built themselves into a single shape taller than the gate.

It had no head. It had no face.

Where its chest should have been, there was a hollow, a dark open space ringed with reaching hands. The hands opened and closed and opened again, slowly, like a mouth breathing.

[ Thousandhand Longing Warden ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Scaled to: Tier-9 ]

[ Attack: 52,000 ] [ Speed: 3,200 ] [ Constitution: 190,000 ] [ Arcane: 70,000 ]

"Back," said Rishin. "All of you. Back."

Nobody went back.

Halden and Terry had already moved. They went past the family on either side and planted themselves before the warden with halberd and shield.

Hob came up beside Daniel with his head lowered and his horns pointed at the warden. Thessaris rose to her full height. Vulkarn’s skin had begun to glow red from within.

Garen had both pistols out. Isolde’s chakram was in her hand. Bram hefted his hammer, and Edda drew her knives.

Logan drew his sword.

"Do not offer," said Rishin. "Whatever it does. Whoever it takes hold of. Do not offer."

The warden leaned toward them.

All of its arms moved at once. They swung out from the great knotted body in every direction, long and pale and searching, with their fingers spread. They did not strike. They reached.

One reached past Halden toward Garen. One reached over Terry’s shield for Helen. A dozen of them groped across the floor toward Vina, where she stood in front of Rishin with Saya’s hand in hers.

Link stepped into their path with his staff raised.

The red flame burst from the iron cage at its head. It struck the nearest hands, and they shrivelled and fell back, smoking.

The rest kept coming.

Logan opened Sword Intent.

The warden lit up before his eyes like a net. Every arm was a thread, thin and grey and countless. They ran down out of the knotted body into the floor, and they ran forward out of the reaching fingers toward the family.

Every one of them was going to someone.

He saw a thread run from a hand to his mother. He saw another run to Alice, and another to Garen, and a thick bright cluster of them running to Vina. Then he saw where they all came from.

They came out of the hollow in the warden’s chest. And the hollow was not empty.

In Sword Intent, it was a knot so dense and dark that it hurt his eyes to look at. Every thread in the warden ran back into it, and from it a single thick cord ran straight back into the gate, toward the warm gold light.

’That is the asking,’ Logan thought. ’The whole thing is the asking.’

"Alice," he said. "Its chest. Everything goes to its chest."

Then the first hand found Helen.