Chapter 751: The Fourth Door

The first thing he saw when he stepped into his world was a boy of about fifteen shouting at a line of grown men.

They were on the eastern flat, where the training ground had been only a stretch of trampled grass when Leon left. Now it had a proper fence of split timber, a raked sand circle, and a rack of wooden spears. The boy was standing in front of the rack with his hands on his hips, and the men were doing footwork drills, badly, while he corrected them one at a time.

“Left foot first. Left. That’s your right, Grandfather Oren.”

“I know which foot is which,” the old man muttered.

“Then use the left one.”

Leon stood at the edge of the flat and watched.

He knew all of this. His clone had built that fence over the past weeks, with the settlement’s carpenters doing most of the cutting. He’d chosen the boy himself, through the clone’s eyes, because the boy had been the only one who never got bored of drills. He’d seen every post go in.

It was different, being here.

Both sets of senses were his. He could still feel the fence rail beneath the body sitting at the far end of the flat. But this body had spent so long in Palace rooms and unfamiliar country that he lingered over the smell of cut timber. He had no appointment here. For a few minutes, he could stand and watch a boy scold an old man about his feet.

That boy’s going to be insufferable in two years. Good.

His clone was at the far end of the flat, sitting on the fence rail with a ledger on its knee.

It looked up when Leon came over. It didn’t need to. Leon felt himself see himself, the familiar double image that no longer interrupted what he was doing. They nodded to each other.

Neither of them said anything. There was nothing to say. Leon already knew what was in the ledger, because he was the one writing it.

“You know,” said Xyra’s voice beside him, “when you two nod at each other like that, it’s the most unsettling thing in my entire world.”

She’d appeared on the fence rail between one moment and the next, sitting comfortably beside him as though she’d been there all morning.

“It’s efficient,” said Leon.

“It’s a man agreeing with himself in a field.” She tilted her head and studied his face. “You’ve come back with that look.”

“What look?” Leon asked.

“The one where you’ve decided to do something stupid and you’re already pleased about it.”

“It’s not stupid,” Leon said. “It’s the Tower.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “Same look.”

***

He brought the four women through from the Palace residence before closing the passage. An hour later, they found him on the porch of the main house.

Ira came first and sat down on the step right beside him, close enough that her knee pressed against his.

“You’re going in,” she said.

“Floor Four.”

“Alone?” Ira asked.

“This time, yes.”

She made a face, but she didn’t argue. He wanted to measure his own progress this time. “Then I want a full report. Not ‘I won.’ What you did, and how it felt. I want to know what that Foundation of yours does when you stop babying it.”

“So do I,” said Leon.

Seraphine was leaning on the porch post with her arms folded. “Don’t stay longer than you should just because you’re curious,” she said. “If something goes wrong, come out.”

“I’ll come out.”

“I’ve heard you say that before.”

“And I came out,” Leon said.

“Eventually,” Seraphine said, and let it go.

Loriel had sat down on his other side without a word and put her hand flat against his ribs, over the place where they’d been cracked. She held it there a moment, feeling for something. He waited.

“They’re fine,” she said at last, and took her hand back. “Completely. You can stop favoring that side.” She looked faintly pink, as she still did whenever she touched him in front of the others, but she didn’t move away.

Vyra stayed standing. She had a sheaf of notes in one hand, the way she often did, and she was looking at him with the slight frown that meant she was working something out.

“What’s the objective?” she asked. “Basic clear, or are you going after something harder?”

“I won’t know until I see the floor.”

“Then decide before you go in how much you’re willing to spend for the harder one.” She tapped the edge of her notes against her palm. “You always get greedy halfway through.”

“I do not,” Leon said.

All four of them looked at him.

“Fine,” said Leon. “I’ll decide.”

He wasn’t going to use the bead. That was a model on a plate, still needing his hand to stop it coming apart. What he wanted to test was everything he’d already mastered, his completed Foundation, his old strength, his space and his elements, working together without anyone holding his hand.

***

The Tower’s door appeared where it always did when he called it, a tall plain arch at the edge of the eastern flat that hadn’t been there a breath before.

Leon walked through it.

[Ascension Tower — Floor Four]

[Challenger: Paragon]

[Private Trial Mode: Active]

[Outside observers: Excluded]

[Designated Tower administrator access: Retained]

Leon checked the access notice before dismissing it. His own Tower’s designated administrator retained access, as before. Velrith remained excluded. The methods he used here would not be broadcast to outside observers.

The next notice came up slower.

[Battlefield: The Valley of Three Fires]

[Mandatory objective: Secure all three strongpoints]

[Optional objective: Defeat the Marshal of the Valley Host]

[Evaluation and rewards depend on objectives completed]

The light faded, and he was standing at the mouth of a long valley under a gray sky.

He looked at it for a while.

It was perhaps two miles long and half a mile wide, with a river running down its middle. On the northern ridge sat a stone bastion bristling with archers and robed casters. Down by the river, on a low island of rock, there was a squat redoubt with shields stacked along its walls. And at the far end of the valley, where it narrowed, stood a gatehouse with tall towers. Behind the keep, on a rise, a single banner hung from a pole.

That’s where he is.

He watched the three strongpoints for a slow count of a hundred. The bastion’s archers could see the whole northern half of the valley. The redoubt could cover the river crossings. The keep watched the ground in front of the banner. And where their fields of fire overlapped, the ground had been churned to mud.

Between the bastion and the redoubt, a column of soldiers was moving along a covered trench. The reserve. It went one way and then the other, never stopping, always shifting to wherever it might be needed next.

They’re not three forts. They’re one.

He smiled. He couldn’t help it.

He stepped forward onto the valley floor.

The bastion fired at once. A wave of arrows, bright with power, arched up from the ridge and came down toward him. Leon started to move left, the natural way, toward the dead ground beneath the ridge where the arrows couldn’t follow.

And down at the river, the redoubt’s casters loosed their own volley, aimed well wide of him.

It was going into the dead ground. Exactly where he’d been about to step.