Chapter 250: Asked

The hand closed round Helen’s wrist.

It was grey and cold and longer than her forearm. Its fingers wrapped round her twice. Logan saw his mother’s face go white, and then the arm behind the hand drew back toward the warden, and Helen was jerked off her feet.

[ Asked: Helen Wolf ]

"Helen!"

Daniel caught her round the waist. He planted his feet on the scarred stone and pulled, and the arm and the man strained against each other.

[ Rooted Stance (Lv1) ]

His boots locked to the floor. The arm pulled and could not move him.

Daniel looked at the panel. He looked at his wife’s white face, and Logan saw his mouth open.

"Dad!" Logan shouted. "Do not!"

Daniel’s jaw shut so hard that Logan heard his teeth click.

Logan was already moving.

In Sword Intent the hand was a grey knot round his mother’s wrist, and a thread ran out of it back to the warden’s chest. It was thin and taut and humming. It looked like the burning promise thread on the Eighth Layer, only grey.

He knew how to cut a thread.

[ Broken Chain ]

His blade passed through the gap between the hand and his mother’s wrist without touching either. The thread parted.

The fingers sprang open. Helen fell back against Daniel, gasping. Her name vanished from the panel, and the last line read one person again.

The warden did not slow.

Its hands were everywhere. They came over Terry’s shield and under Halden’s halberd. They came round Thessaris’s long green limbs and groped past Hob’s lowered horns. Every time one closed on somebody, a name flashed on the panel and then went out again as they tore free.

[ Asked: Garen Rezvolt ]

Garen shot the hand off his shoulder at the wrist. Isolde’s chakram sheared through three more that were reaching for him.

[ Asked: Edda ]

Bram’s hammer came down on the arm that had her by the ankle, and the arm burst like dry wood.

Vulkarn had set his whole body alight. Hands that touched him shrivelled and fell back blackened. Behind him the Thistlemaw was tearing them out of the air with its long bark arms and throwing them aside.

But they grew back. Every arm that fell, two more rose out of the floor to take its place.

Alice was shooting at the chest.

She stood behind Terry’s shield and loosed arrow after arrow into the hollow. Each one struck the ring of hands round the dark opening and stuck there. The hands closed over the arrows and swallowed them.

"It is not reaching it!" she shouted. "There are too many hands in the way!"

"I will open it," said Logan.

He swung his sword back.

[ Heaven-Splitting Line ]

The wave left his blade flat and wide. It went across the scarred floor and struck the warden full in the chest, and the hands circling the hollow were sheared away. For one instant the knot inside stood bare.

Alice’s arrow was already in the air.

[ Puncture ]

It struck the knot dead center and sank in. The warden shuddered along every one of its arms.

Then new hands knotted across the hollow, and the knot was hidden.

"Again!" said Garen.

Logan raised his blade. Before he could swing, he saw the hands change direction.

They stopped reaching for everyone. Every arm the warden had turned at once, like a field of grass turning in the wind, and they all reached for the same place.

They reached for Vina.

Link was in front of her. His flame roared up from the iron cage and burned a dozen hands to smoke. Solveig dived in with his wings spread and tore through a dozen more. Saya pulled Vina back against her chest and wrapped both arms round her.

It was not enough. There were too many.

The hands came through the fire and round Solveig’s wings. They came round Saya’s arms and closed on the girl inside them, on her arms and her legs and her waist and her shoulders, until Logan could barely see her.

[ Asked: Vina Wolf ]

Helen screamed.

Logan was running. He did not remember starting. Through Sword Intent, the hands round his sister were a dense grey mass. A hundred threads ran back from her to the warden’s chest, and he swung at them as he ran.

[ Broken Chain ]

Six threads parted. Six hands fell away.

There were ninety more.

He swung again, and again. Every cut freed a few, and every few that fell, more closed on her. He could hear Vina crying out from inside them. He could hear his mother screaming her name.

Saya’s mouth was wide open.

She was trying to speak. Logan saw her throat working, saw her lips shape the same word over and over, and nothing came out of her at all. She had no voice to offer with.

Nell’s mouth opened too.

Rishin’s hand came down over it.

"No," Rishin told her. "Not you. Not again."

He took his hand from her mouth and pushed her gently toward her mother. Saya let go of Vina with one arm and caught Nell’s hand.

Rishin stepped forward between his wife and his daughter. He stood close enough to keep them both awake.

He drew his sword.

Logan had seen Stay drawn a hundred times. He had never seen the old man hold it like this, low and still at his side, with his eyes closed.

"Boy," said Rishin. "Watch. You will need this when I am gone."

He opened his eyes.

[ Severance of Heaven ]

Logan did not see the blade move.

He saw the line. It ran through the air from the old man’s sword to the warden, thin and white and perfectly straight. It went through every one of the hundred grey threads that bound his sister, all at once, in the same instant.

And everything along that line stopped being connected.

The hands fell off Vina like dead leaves. They fell off Saya’s arms and off Solveig’s wings. Every thread that ran from the warden’s chest to the family parted, all of them together, and the warden reared back with all its arms flung wide.

Vina dropped to the floor. Saya caught her.

Vina’s name went out on the panel.

Rishin went down on one knee.

Stay was still in his hand. Its point rested on the floor, and he was leaning on it, and blood was running from his nose and from the corners of his eyes. His arm was shaking from the shoulder down.

Logan remembered his body breaking on the mountain, and the pond, and waking up in it.

’He is level seven,’ he thought. ’He is level seven, and he did that.’

"Grandpa!" Vina was struggling up out of Saya’s arms. "Grandpa!"

Rishin raised his head to her. He was smiling.

Then the panel’s last line filled in again.

[ Asked: Rishin ]

Every hand the warden had left turned toward him.

They did not rush. They reached for him slowly and gently from every side, the way a mother reaches for a child she had given up for lost.

Rishin did not raise his sword.

He knelt on the scarred floor with Saya and Nell on either side of him and blood on his face, and he looked at the hands coming toward him. Logan saw his shoulders loosen.

"There," Rishin said. "Now it asks for me."

His eyes went to Vina.

"No one has to go instead," he said. "No one offered. I kept my word, little one. I did not go into the gate."

"No," said Vina. "No. No, no, no."

The first hand touched his shoulder.