Chapter 156: Choose The Ground

The reed took a second step, and it was not a reed.

It unfolded as it moved. Two legs as thin as broom handles lifted out of the pool, each one jointed backward at the knee.

Above them hung a narrow body no thicker than a man’s thigh, feathered in the same pale green as the stalks around it.

What Logan had taken for the tip of the reed was a beak. It was straight and as long as his arm, and it had been pointing at the roof.

The beak came down and levelled at the rock where they stood. Beside it, the other two reeds unfolded in the same way.

[ Reedspear Wader ] [ Level: 5 ] [ Rank: Uncommon ]

"Nyriel," Logan said.

The constellation brightened under the dripping roof and gave him four numbers.

[ Attack: 31 ] [ Speed: 24 ] [ Constitution: 11 ] [ Arcane: 0 ]

’That is more than twice a crawler’s Attack and four times its Speed,’ Logan thought. ’But the Constitution is only eleven. They hit hard, and they break easily.’

Billy had already rolled half a turn toward the pool. Pebble’s sling had begun to circle.

"No," Rishin said from his hump of stone. He had not stood up. "Helen. Daniel. These are yours, and the new one may help you."

Pebble looked back at Logan, and Logan nodded.

"Yes, boss," Pebble said. He hopped down off the rock and went to stand with Logan’s parents, as easily as if he had been assigned to them all his life.

Daniel had his rock in both hands. Helen’s palms were already lit.

"On the shelf, the crawlers came to wherever you happened to be standing," Rishin said. "You fought on their ground because you did not know there was a choice. There is one. Look around you, and decide where they reach you."

The waders were in no hurry.

They came through the pool with slow, high steps. They lifted each foot clear of the water and set it down again without a splash, and their heads swayed gently from side to side as they came.

Daniel looked around the gallery.

Logan recognized the look. His father used to give it to a heavy load before he lifted it, working out where his hands would have to go.

To the left of the circle’s rock, two of the stone pillars stood close together. The gap between them was a little wider than a man’s shoulders.

Behind them the floor rose into a dry bank of stone, and in front of them lay a pool that came no higher than the ankle.

"There," Daniel said. "Between those two. They can only come at me from the front, and only one beak fits through at a time."

"And Helen?"

"Behind me, on the dry ground."

"And the boy with the sling?"

Daniel glanced over the bank. A broken stump of stone stood a few paces behind the gap, about waist high.

"Up there," he said. "Where he can see over my head."

Rishin’s chin dipped. "Go."

They went.

Daniel splashed across the shallow pool and set his back foot against the base of the left-hand pillar. Brown lines crept down from his ankles and into the stone.

[ Rooted Stance (Lv1) ]

Helen took the dry bank behind him and laid one glowing hand flat between his shoulder blades. She had started the heal before anything had touched him, exactly as she had on the shelf.

Pebble scrambled up onto the stump and crouched there with his sling hanging loose.

On the circle’s rock, Isolde had moved to stand beside Vina and Solveig. Garen had walked out along the bank until he was level with the pillars, and he stood there with his arms folded.

Alice had an arrow on the string and her eyes on the third wader.

Logan stood where he was. He put his hand on Grimlord’s Blade and then, deliberately, took it off again.

The first wader reached the gap.

It stopped an arm’s length short of Daniel. Its head stopped swaying, and it stood as motionless as the pillars on either side of it.

Then the beak shot forward.

To Logan, it was not fast. His Speed was so far beyond the creature’s that he could have counted the feathers on its neck as it came.

But his father’s eyes had never been trained on anything quicker than a thrown ball. Daniel did not even flinch until the point was already in him.

It took him high in the left shoulder and drew back out in the same motion. The wader stood exactly as before, with a line of red along its beak.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 100% → 86% ]

Daniel grunted through his teeth. He did not step back, because he had not chosen anywhere to step back to.

Helen’s heal was already at work, and the number began to climb. The wader went still again.

"It stops moving just before, sir," Pebble called from the stump. His voice was quick and steady. "Count one after the head stops."

The beak came again and took Daniel in the upper arm.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 90% → 78% ]

Then it came a third time.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 82% → 72% ]

Daniel frowned down at his arm.

"It is hitting softer," he said.

"It is not," said Rishin.

A panel had opened in front of Daniel. Logan could not see it, but he watched his father’s eyes move across it once, and then again more slowly.

[ Patient Stone ] [ While standing still, damage taken is reduced by a further 3% each second, up to 45%. Moving resets it. ]

"Patient Stone," Daniel read aloud. "It says the longer I stand still, the less they can hurt me."

"A talent that rewards a man for staying where he is." Rishin sounded almost amused. "It has been waiting since your garden for you to hold one place long enough to notice it."

Logan ran the numbers without meaning to.

’Fourteen, twelve and then ten,’ he thought. ’Rooted Stance takes a fifth off every hit, and that talent keeps taking more on top of it. In a few more seconds, those beaks will barely be scratching him.’

Daniel looked at the wader. The wader had gone still again.

"One," Daniel said, and he lifted his rock in front of his shoulder.

The beak struck the rock dead center.

It made a sound like a dry branch snapping. The beak split along its length from the tip to the nostrils, and the wader reeled backward with a thin shriek, shaking its ruined head.

[ Snaring Roots (Lv1) ]

Roots burst up through the ankle-deep water and wrapped both of its stilt legs. The wader pitched forward into the gap and landed at Daniel’s feet, with its long neck stretched across the stone.

Helen leaned around his shoulder and lifted her free hand.

[ Spring Lance (Lv1) ]

The jet went through the thin neck and rang against the pillar behind it.

[ Reedspear Wader slain. ] [ Helen Wolf: +25 Tower Points ] [ Helen Wolf: Level 3 → 4 ]

The second wader came on over the body of the first.

It had to. The dead one lay across the bottom of the gap, and the only way through was to step over it. The wader stabbed from a bad angle with one foot raised, and the beak skidded off Daniel’s ribs.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 81% → 75% ]

Daniel had not moved his feet once since the fight began, and Patient Stone had not reset.

Pebble’s sling whirred. The stone took the wader in the side of the head with a flat crack, and its head snapped around toward the stump.

Daniel did not waste the opening. His roots caught its raised leg and the one beneath it, and the wader came down on top of the dead one. He brought the rock down on the back of its neck with both hands.

[ Reedspear Wader slain. ] [ Daniel Wolf: +25 Tower Points ] [ Daniel Wolf: Level 3 → 4 ]

"Two," Daniel said, breathing hard.

Alice was not watching the gap. She had not taken her eyes off the third wader since it unfolded.

It had stopped at the edge of the pool when the first one died. It had watched the second one die on top of the first.

Now it turned away from the pillars and waded off to the left through deeper water. It was taking a wide curve that would bring it up onto the dry bank from the side.

’It is going around,’ Alice thought. ’They chose their ground, and now it is choosing a different one.’

Her fingers tightened on the string. Rishin had not said a word.

’Does she see it?’

Helen did not see it. She had both hands on Daniel’s back, pouring a fresh heal into him, and her head was down.

Pebble saw it.

"Ma’am! On your left!"

His stone hit the wader in the eye as it stepped onto the bank. It was a good shot. It also made the wader forget about Helen entirely.

The beak took Pebble in the chest and knocked him backward off the stump.

[ Pebble: HP 100% → 38% ]

Logan had seen it coming the whole way. He had watched the wader’s head go still and had counted the same one that Pebble had taught his father to count.

He could have crossed the bank and cut the creature in half before the beak had travelled a hand’s width.

His blade was a third of the way out of the sheath. He could not remember drawing it.

’He is Normal-rank,’ Logan thought. ’One more like that and he is gone, and I will not let it land. But if I take this one now, all three of them learn that I always will.’

The wader stepped over the stump. It stood above Pebble where he lay on the stone, and its head stopped swaying.

Logan’s weight came forward onto his toes.

Helen turned around.

She did not have a wall behind her or a husband in front of her. She had one hand free and a thing with a spear for a face standing over a boy who had shouted to save her. Her palm came up.

The jet took the wader under the jaw and came out through the top of its skull.

[ Reedspear Wader slain. ] [ Helen Wolf: +25 Tower Points ]

Logan slid Grimlord’s Blade back into its sheath, one slow inch at a time.

Helen was on her knees beside Pebble before the wader had finished falling.

He was sitting up with one hand pressed to his chest. He looked more surprised than hurt. She pulled his hand away and put hers in its place, and green-blue light sank into the torn leather.

[ Pebble: HP 38% → 47% → 59% ]

"Thank you," Helen said. Her voice shook. "You shouted. Thank you."

"Just doing the job, ma’am," Pebble said. He seemed embarrassed. He looked over her shoulder at Logan. "Boss, is it always like that?"

"It gets better," Billy called from the arch. He had clearly been holding himself back by main force. "You get a wheel."

Daniel had finally stepped out of the gap. The holes in his shoulder and arm were still seeping. As he came up the bank toward his wife, Logan saw the blood slow and then stop, although her hands were nowhere near him.

Helen saw it too. Then her eyes went to a panel that only she could see.

[ Unbroken Hearth ] [ Allies within ten meters of the holder slowly recover HP at all times. ]

"Unbroken Hearth," she read out. She gave a short, wet laugh. "Has it been doing that the whole time?"

"Since your garden, I expect," Rishin said. He had come down off his hump of stone at last, and he stood looking at the three dead waders. "You chose your ground well, Daniel. Remember that the third one chose too."

"I will," Daniel said.

They walked on into the gallery once Pebble could stand.

He went beside Daniel now, without anyone having told him to. Vina walked on his other side and asked him whether being stabbed had hurt, and he told her gravely that it had.

The lane between the pools grew wider as they went. The roof drew lower and the dripping grew louder.

Through the windows on the right, Logan could see the far wall of the Abyss and its thousand watching holes, sliding past one ragged frame at a time.

The first bones lay beside the fourth window.

They were long and thin, and Logan knew them at once for the leg bones of waders. Every one had been cracked open down its length.

More lay beyond them, scattered among reeds that had been trampled flat in a swathe as wide as a road.

’A bigger hunter eats the waders,’ Logan thought. ’And it is large enough to need a road.’

Ahead of them, the gallery narrowed toward a second arch. A mound of dripstone lay across the way in the largest pool, and a double row of stone spikes ran down the middle of it from one end to the other.

Rishin stopped walking. His hand closed on Vina’s.

"Stop," he said. "All of you. Stone does not grow in rows."

The mound breathed.