Chapter 225: The Strider

Rishin did not ask why.

He stepped back from the drop with Vina’s hand in his. Link went back with him, and Solveig moved in front of both of them with his wings half open.

"What is it?" said Garen. He had both pistols out.

"It is coming up his thread," said Logan. "From underneath. I can only see it with Sword Intent."

"His what?"

"The promise. His promise. It is a thread, and it goes down into the dark, and a thing is climbing it."

Nobody asked him which promise. Alice’s hand closed on his arm.

It came up over the edge of the shelf.

Logan saw it with Sword Intent first. It was a knot of grey threads, tangled into a body the size of a cart, with long legs folded round it. Every leg ended in a hooked point.

It climbed the old man’s thread, and it pulled itself onto the shelf.

When he closed Sword Intent, he could still see it. Its body was real. It was grey and ridged like knotted rope, and it had no face, only a cluster of small pale eyes at its front.

But its legs did not stand on the shelf. They stood on nothing. They stood in the empty air at the edge of the drop, and the air held them up.

"It is walking on the threads," Logan said. "The ones you cannot see."

[ Promise Thread Strider ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Scaled to: Tier-9 ]

[ Attack: 38,000 ] [ Speed: 11,000 ] [ Constitution: 110,000 ] [ Arcane: 40,000 ]

The units went for it first.

They had to. Logan could not get past them.

Halden’s halberd came down on one of its legs. The leg bent away from the blade along a thread that nobody else could see, and the halberd struck stone. Billy went in under it and cut at its body.

It lifted itself out of his reach on legs that stood on air.

Terry grabbed for it. It was not there. It had stepped sideways, along nothing, out over the drop.

It hung there above the dark and turned its cluster of pale eyes on the family.

Garen fired at its legs. Both shots went through the empty air beneath it and on into the dark. Isolde’s chakram went round it once and returned to her clean.

"I cannot hit what it stands on," said Garen.

Edda had both knives out. She looked from the Strider to the empty air under its legs and back again.

"Then how do we fight it?" she asked.

Then it went along a thread.

Logan saw which one.

It was his.

The thread from his chest to Alice was short. It ran across a few paces of shelf, behind Terry, between the two of them.

The Strider put one hooked foot on it.

Logan felt it. He felt the thread go taut in his chest, the way a fishing line goes taut when a fish takes the hook. The Strider walked along it.

It walked along his promise toward Alice, one leg after another, its body swinging out over the shelf behind Terry’s back.

Terry turned to grab it. It was too high.

Alice’s bow was up. She loosed. The arrow went into the grey knotted body and stuck there, and the Strider did not stop.

"Logan," she said. She did not lower the bow. "It is coming down your thread."

"I know."

He could not go to her. She was behind Terry. Terry was a unit. His feet would not carry him past.

"Cut it," said Alice.

Logan looked at her.

She had another arrow on the string. The Strider was halfway along the thread now, close enough that Logan could see the pale eyes moving. She did not look at it. She looked at him.

"Cut the thread," she said. "Your sword does that. You did it in the Seam."

"It is the promise. If I cut it..."

"Then you do not have to keep it any more. Not here. Not because this place says so." She lifted the bow. "I do not need the Abyss to make you keep your word, Logan. Cut it."

He opened Sword Intent.

The thread ran bright from the middle of his chest. He could see the place where it was tied to him. It was a small hard knot under his ribs.

The Strider’s foot was on the thread an arm’s length from him.

He put the point of Grimlord’s Blade against the knot.

[ Broken Chain ]

It hurt.

He had not expected that. It hurt the way a splinter hurts coming out, sharp and quick and then gone. The thread parted.

The Strider fell.

Its foot had been on the thread, and the thread was gone. It dropped half a body’s length through the air before its other legs caught on other threads. It hung there, lurching, with its pale eyes rolling.

Logan stepped past Terry.

The big unit looked down at him in surprise as he went by. "Lord?"

"It is gone," said Logan. "The promise. I cut it."

His feet went. Nothing held them.

He went past Terry and Halden and out along the shelf to the edge, and he cut.

[ Grimspire Lance ]

Grimlord’s Blade drew out to eleven feet and thinned to a needle. He drove it up into the Strider where Alice’s arrow stood in its body. Rope-grey flesh split round it. The Strider shrieked.

It was a dry sound, like old rope pulled through a block.

Then it was gone.

It went off the shelf, down along the threads that only Logan could see, into the dark. He watched it go in Sword Intent until it was a smudge.

It did not go far.

It stopped. It hung below the shelf in the dark, turning slowly. Then it reached out with one hooked leg toward a thread that was thicker than any of the others.

The old man’s thread.

"Rishin," said Logan. "It is going for yours."

The old man was standing at the back of the shelf with Vina in front of him and Link’s hand in his belt.

He looked at Logan, and then down at the girl, and then at the edge. He did not look surprised.

Helen had come up beside him. She saw his face and put her hand on Vina’s shoulder without a word.

Bram had his shield up in front of the three of them, though there was nothing in front of them to block.

"I know," he said.

Logan watched it in Sword Intent. The Strider gripped the old man’s thread with all its legs at once.

It did not climb this time.

It pulled.

The old man went forward.

He went as if he had been yanked by the collar.

He had been standing at the rear of the shelf. Then he was two steps nearer the drop, and Link was dragged after him with his hand in the belt and his heels skidding on the stone.

Vina went with them. Her hand was locked in his. She was not being pulled by the thread. She was being pulled by her promise, and she could not let go.

"Grandpa!"

Rishin set his feet. Logan saw him do it. He set them hard on the stone, and the thread pulled, and his feet slid anyway.

The Strider was hauling him down to the bottom of the pit, the way a fisherman hauls in a line.