Chapter 5975: What Cannot Be Mended!

Nothing moved. The snow had stopped in the air over the whole of the farm, and nothing on either side of the furrow had moved since.

On the eastern ridge, the Shepherd’s Unfathomables stood in their ranks with their hands at their sides, and the Half-Unfathomables behind them barely breathed. On the western side, the silver wings hung open and still, and the two vast obsidian giants behind them had turned every one of their faces toward the field.

Behind the line, Henry stood with his wings half spread and every eye along them open, watching his father’s back. Thalia stood at his left with her golden tentacles lifted. In the coop, the stellar chickens had gone silent all at once, and the only sound anywhere on the farm was the low running of the three rivers.

Noah stood in front of the furrow with Elpis in his hands, and for a long while, he did nothing at all!

Of course, doing nothing was not the same as not thinking. Two armies, each far stronger than him, each wanting something different, and neither willing to move first. Who would break the silence? What would they try first? And what did he absolutely have to keep safe, whatever happened?

The last question was the easiest. Without any hurry, he reached out with his authority to the twenty-three walls turning around him, took the nearest one, and lifted it gently away from his body. He let it settle out behind him, over the soil and the rivers and the coop and the little shell house and everyone standing behind the line, until it lay over the whole farm in a long, warm curve of obsidian-gold light. Snow that had been hanging above the field came to rest on top of it.

|Narrative Wall laid over the farm: Farm Wall.|

|Narrative Walls standing: 23 of 23. Around you: 22. Over the farm: 1.|

"Henry," Noah said, without turning around. "Nobody crosses the line but me."

Henry opened his mouth, and closed it again. "Father," he said at last, and his voice was very steady, "I said I’d stand next to you."

"You are," Noah said. "You’re standing next to everything I care about. That’s where I need you at this time."

Henry did not answer. But his wings came slowly all the way open, every eye along them burning, and he did not take a single step forward. Beside him, Thalia let out a breath that might have been relief.

Roxanna moved first!

HUUM!

She did not shout, and she did not call her forces after her. She came down off the frozen ridge alone, her split burnt-gold armor catching the faint grey light of the Fallow, and stopped at the line to look down at it. Then she stepped over it, onto the black-gold soil.

His weavings were fully permeated over all of the surrounding existence for many, many light years as he perceived and obtained information with rapidity. Glorious magisterial rapidity!

|Appraisal: Roxanna, of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars.|

|Essara held: Destruction (Rare).|

|Waking Vein: THE Break That Goes All the Way Down (Destruction, Strike).|

|Warning: what she breaks may not come back.|

Noah looked at the last line for a moment.

Roxanna had braced herself for the soil to drink her, after what the grass had done to her forces. It did not. It simply held her, warm and steady under her feet, and in truth, that disturbed her more than an attack would have. What kind of ground welcomed the one who had come to break it?

"I would rather this ended quickly, Dreamer," she said. "For both of us."

He only looked at her.

"THE Break That Goes All the Way Down," Roxanna said.

She struck once. Her fist met only the air between them, and the outermost of Noah’s walls came apart, all the way down, into nothing at all. Where it had stood, a ragged hole hung open in existence, white-cracked at its edges and utterly empty.

THE Endless Retelling reached for the place where the wall had been, as it had for every broken wall since the day it bloomed. It found the hole, and stopped. It could not fill a place that existence itself no longer held.

|A Narrative Wall has been destroyed by a unique Essara of Existence. Essara of Existence: Destruction. Rarity: Rare. Effect: Whatever one strikes is broken through every layer it has: its form, its Immensity, its Narrative, and its place in existence. Where something is broken, existence is left with a hole, and closes it only slowly, on its own. Nothing broken this way can be mended while the hole stays open.|

|The space it held has been broken out of existence.|

|THE Endless Retelling cannot restore a wall into a broken space while the hole remains open.|

|Narrative Walls standing: 22 of 23. Broken out of existence: 1.|

...!

On the western side, Thessaly’s grin spread slowly across her face, all teeth. "Look at that," she murmured to her sister. "The Shepherd sent someone useful for once...though they are interfering with our work..."

Phaedra did not smile. She watched the white hole hanging beside the man in the straw hat, and her cold eyes narrowed. "Watch what he does," she said. "Not what she does."

Roxanna struck again, and again, and again. Three more walls came apart into nothing, three more holes hung open beside the first, and with each one, something of the breaking passed back up through the walls and into Noah. On the fourth, blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He did not move. He did not raise the mighty Hoe! He looked at Roxanna across the soil she was standing on, with the blood beginning to run down his chin, and his face was calm.

"Who...are you protecting?" he asked her.

HUUM!

Roxanna’s fist stopped halfway into her fifth strike. She had expected him to strike back, or to plead, or to boast. A polite question from a man she had just broken four times was not on that list.

"That does not matter," she said.

"It does to me," Noah said. "And it will matter a whole lot to you later."

His words were ominous as...why?

She held her fist where it was for a long moment, cracks running white from her knuckles to her elbow, and somewhere behind her black eyes, something very small shifted and did not settle back. Then she drew the fist back and struck, and the fifth wall came apart.

She did not feel the need to answer!

|Narrative Walls standing: 18 of 23. Around you: 17. Over the farm: 1.|

|Broken out of existence: 5. Rebuilding: 0.|

Five gone for good, and not one of them coming back!

Then the ridges loosed. Roxanna’s silence broke something open in her ranks, and the Shepherd’s Unfathomables came down off the frozen current in a long, terrible wave, Narratives blazing at their backs, phantoms rising behind them as large as Dimensions. The Half-Unfathomables poured after them, with Ione and her grey glass arm among them and the Iron Psalm behind her. From the west, Kir One and Kir Two rose and came across the starlit grass, slow and enormous, and the Narratives in the air began to bend toward their open mouths. Above them, Thessaly spread her silver wings and laughed.

Noah drew every wall he had left close around his own body, seventeen of them turning tight and bright, all except the one over the farm. He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, looked at the five white holes hanging beside him, and settled Elpis in his hands.

Then he turned to face all of it at once!

HUUUUUM!

From inside the Farm Wall, it was almost quiet. Snow lay along the top of the warm gold curve, thin and white, and the three rivers ran at Henry’s back exactly as they always had. A few paces in front of him, on the other side of that thin light, existence was being torn apart, and his father had told him to stay where he was.

"We... have to do something," Henry said through his teeth.

"We are doing something," Thalia said. "We are staying where he put us." Her tentacles were wound so tight they shook. "It is the hardest thing he has ever asked."

"And if he falls?"

"Your father...never falls," Thalia said simply.

The Shepherd’s Unfathomables reached Noah first, in a long curving line, each with a phantom rising behind them: a burning ship, a forest of spears, a tower of white bone, a coiled serpent with stars for scales. They struck him all at once, from every side, and his walls shuddered and cracked and held, and cracked again.

Kir One and Kir Two came behind them. The giants did not strike walls. They opened their great mouths, every face at once, and the Narrative in the air around Noah began to pour down their throats, his own among it, pulled out through the cracks in long bright threads. Noah felt it go, a slow, steady draining at the edges of everything he was!

Then Thessaly spread her wings above the field. "THE Red Hour," she said, smiling, and everything near Noah began to burn. The air burned. The hanging snow burned and fell as ash. The soil under his boots smoked, his walls caught fire along their edges, and the sleeves of his coat began to blacken.

|Under attack: Unfathomables of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars and Iron Psalm(phantom strikes, breaking).|

|Status: [Devoured] (Kir One and Kir Two, draining, ongoing). Your Narrative is being drawn out through cracked walls.|

|You have been struck by THE Red Hour (Heat, Thessaly).|

|Status: [Burning] (heat, ongoing, walls and body). Ends: when she lets it.|

Three kinds of harm at once, and only one of them could be mended. In truth, the burning bothered him least. Walls could burn and come back. What Roxanna broke could not.

But...

He was not just standing around being beaten black and blue and doing nothing.

Every one of them who struck him, he marked. He did not even have to decide to. It had happened to every being that struck him inside his own tended existence since the Bleeding Nightmare bloomed, and it happened now. Each Unfathomable who touched his walls, each giant who drank from him, each flame of the Red Hour that licked across his skin, carried a seed away with it, small and dark and silent.

|THE Devourer’s Hemorrhage: seeds planted in every lifeform that strikes you inside your tended existence.|

|Seeds planted: in every attacker on the field.|

|The seeds are rooting.|

None of them noticed. They were too busy breaking him.

And Roxanna kept breaking walls. She moved through the assault without hurrying, her cracked fist rising and falling, and every wall she struck came apart all the way down and left another white hole behind. Noah’s walls fell to fifteen, and thirteen, and eleven. Whatever the Unfathomables cracked, THE Endless Retelling rebuilt. Whatever Roxanna broke stayed broken.

On the eastern ridge, Ione Kalliste watched the holes gather around him, and understood. It was a very simple thing. The man on the farm held a unique Narrative, a unique type of Immensity that could heal anything the Unfathomables did to him, given time, but he could not heal what Roxanna did at all, and Roxanna was not going to stop. Sooner or later, there would be more holes than walls.

Beside her, Brunhild let out a long breath. "He’s finished," she said. "Look at them. There’s no getting out from under that."

"He knelt down," Ione said quietly. "Nobody kneels when they’re finished. They kneel when they’re doing something ridiculous. Be careful."

She looked down at her own grey glass arm. She did not feel the triumph she had expected to feel as she watched a supposed King swarmed on all sides.

Noah went down on one knee. He did it deliberately, and he put his free hand flat on the smoking soil of his farm.

The Unfathomable with the burning ship laughed out loud. "That’s better, Dreamer! Kneel properly, and maybe the Shepherd will let you keep your hat!"

"I’m not kneeling to him you dumb bum fucker," Noah said. "I’m kneeling to my farm."

WAA!

And he gave!

He gave in the middle of the burning and the draining and the breaking, with blood running from his nose now as well as his mouth, without any hurry at all!

His Dreams went down into the soil, and his Nightmares, and the warm authority of the farm, and THE Bounty That Owes Nothing turned in him as quietly as it ever had. Existence took what he gave and gave it back, greater, in rivers of Pure Existential Essence, and he kept none of it. All of it went into the Branch of THE Narrative Wall and the thin, bright shoot of THE Endless Retelling.

|Pure Existential Essence received.|

|Branch of THE Narrative Wall: Level 8 to Level 10. Each wall is now worth 190. Each wall is thicker, heavier, and harder to break compared to before.|

|New Narrative Walls opened: 3. Filled at once.|

|Sub-Branch of THE Endless Retelling: Level 20 to Level 34.|

|Regeneration: 34 hundredths of a wall every second. About 65 Narrative every second.|

Three new walls opened around him, full the instant they appeared, and for a long, strange moment, the Unfathomables struck and struck and could not get through anything at all. Whatever they cracked was whole again before they could strike it twice, and it felt much sturdier!

If he was a boss monster, than Noah’s health bars were increasing in number, and much harder to bring down, and they filled up much quicker!

Only the white holes stayed. Five of them now, then six, then seven, hanging around him in a slowly closing ring!

|Narrative Walls standing: 15 of 26. Around you: 14. Over the farm: 1.|

|Broken out of existence: 7. Rebuilding: 4.|

Fifteen standing out of twenty-six. He had started the morning with twenty-three and was somehow ending this stretch with more walls than he had begun with, and fewer of them standing!

At the western edge of the field, Lifthrasir had not moved. She stood apart from her sisters with white lightning crawling across her knuckles, watching the man on one knee in the burning soil, and she did not raise her hand as the sense of shame within her grew!

Even sending Kir One and Kir Two for her had felt unbearably heavy! This was the Dreamer who had brought her back after all!

Thessaly glanced back at her once, over one silver wing. "Little sister? Are you planning to help, or only to watch?"

Lifthrasir did not answer.

"Leave her be," Phaedra said, without looking back. "She will come when she is ready, or she will not come at all, and either way we will learn something." But she noticed. She noticed everything.

On the fence post inside the Farm Wall, Astarothael sat with her tail around her paws and her eyes narrowed to two thin gold lines.

"He is going to lose like this," she said. "He can mend anything but those."

Lygara stood beside the post with her small hands pressed together. "He...isn’t trying to win," she said.

Astarothael turned her head. "Then what is he doing?"

"Patience," Lygara said. "Watch his hand."

She did not have to say more, as out on the burning soil, the farmer was still kneeling with one hand flat on the ground, still giving!

Noah got slowly back to his feet. His coat was black along both sleeves, the blood had run from his nose onto his collar, and his ears were ringing from the breaking passing back through him. Fourteen walls turned and burned and mended around him, and seven white holes hung among them, waiting.

He looked at the blood on his wrist for a moment, then up at the field.

"All right, we...are almost there." he said, to no one in particular. And he went on! Oh, he went on!