“Hey! Look who I found?”

His party, or at least the members that were there, looked up at Jaz’s shout. Row sat, by herself, staring off towards the chasm. Around her, Cor sat also by herself, with her eyes closed, clearly using her [Meditation] skill. That left Lim, the other archer, and Raf, the two-handed axman.

Nar didn’t spot Teb. He wondered if the four-sword wielding warrior would behave this time around. He hoped so. He just wanted to rest.

“Kur? Holy shit!” Row said.

She stood up and nearly leaped towards them. Behind her, the others followed after her.

“Oh, my Crystal! I can’t believe this!” Row shouted.

Kur chuckled. “Me neither. It’s good to see you guys again.”

“You too! Damn! Wait! Who’s that?” she asked, looking at Rel, asleep at Kur’s back.

“I’ll tell you everything in a second. Can we stay next to you?”

“Of course! What kind of dumb question is that? Come!”

She walked them to the space directly next to her party, and there was indeed a lot of space, like Jaz had said.

“Did you also just arrive?” Kur asked them.

“What? No! We’ve been here for two weeks already,” she said. “It’s boring as the pile! But I don’t like being surrounded by people. So we keep moving to stay on the edge. The air is nicer here, and it's quieter.”

Two weeks? Damn. That was right before we went off into that weird place, Nar thought.

Row helped Kur lay Rel down on the floor, propping a bundle of Gad’s spare shirts and pants to give her some comfort on the hard surface.

The rest of Row’s party hovered nearby, clearly curious as to the new member in their midst.

Row suddenly whipped her neck around and glared at them.

She clapped her hands. “Come on people, give them some space. They just arrived! Let them rest!”

“Will you be letting them rest, boss?” Jaz asked, not even trying to hide his grin.

Row glared at him harder.

“Alright. Alright. We’re going!”

Row shook her head.

“Seriously though. What happened? And why are your clothes purple?” she asked. “Sorry. I just have so many questions!”

Kur smiled at her. “No worries. It’ll be nice to talk about it. We have three whole days for that. I do have a question for you too, tough. What's this Ceremony of Final Atonement?”

Row shrugged with a sigh. “Sorry, man. I’ve got nothing for you. We’ve been here for two weeks and no matter how many people I ask, nobody has a damned clue.”

“So, we just wait and see?”

“Unfortunately.”

While the two party leaders conversed, the rest of the party made themselves comfortable.

“Oh, that’s good,” Mul muttered, laying down on the floor. He didn’t even butter grabbing some clothes to make a pillow. “This is really nice.”

Cen, sitting next to him, stared blankly at the floor. Exhaustion was evident in her hunched posture. Nar predicted it wouldn’t be long before they were both asleep.

Viy was talking about going to the blaster, and Gad and Jul seemed to be fighting their laziness to join her. A nice blasting and some fresh clothes before sleep was hard to resist. Cor was offering to take them there and back, so they didn’t get lost in all those Climbers.

Might go as well. Though maybe later.

Tuk was off chatting with Jaz, Lim and Raf, already laughing and trading stories.

How is he still so full of energy? Crystal…

“Cannibals?” Row whispered. “My Crystal… I can’t believe you were captured.”

“We were. We almost didn’t make it,” Kur whispered.

“Thank Crystal you did! But then… What is she doing here?”

Nar lay down, knowing that he shouldn’t if he was to have any hope of blasting any time soon. However, he was just so tired.

He covered his eyes with his arm, blocking out the bright glare of the light from above.

“The lights will go off soon, Nar. For the night,” Row told him, interrupting her chat with Kur. “So, just wait a bit.”

Nar offered her a tired thumbs up, and the two party leaders returned to their conversation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

On the other side of him, he heard Tuk’s hushed, mad talk with the others from Row’s party.

It was nice.

It was really nice to be there.

Rel was still out, but he had to hope that she was going to hold on. For now, there was nothing more he could do.

I’ve made it dad. Damn! I actually can’t believe it.

Through guardians, cannibals, and magic wielding machines. Through aura and Pressure. With a new party member. With all the things that had happened to them. That had changed and molded him into this new person that he was now, and which had guided him onto his new path.

I wonder if my dad will even recognize me.

A smile curled his lips.

He’ll be happy to know I ended up doing what he wanted. Trust them. Make them more than just a means to Climb. More than even friends. A real party. I wonder if he'll believe his eyes when I show up with them. Ready to save him…

Between the two conversations, Nar was quickly lulled into sleep. It came so fast he didn’t even notice its approach.

*********

When he came too, it was dark.

The ceiling above him glowed with just the barest hint of a dark yellow light, just enough to provide enough light for everyone to be able to see in the dark.

He lay where he was, listening to the sleeping sounds of the others around him.

It must be the middle of night.

“Psst. Nar. Are you awake?”

He sat up.

“Rel?”

“Shhh!”

He turned around, looking for her in the dark.

“You’re awake!” he said, staring at her in shock.

“So are you! You slept through the whole day!”

“The… What?”

“One night, one day, and half of another night. You must have been wrecked,” she said. “Kur and Row almost lost it, trying to keep everyone quiet around you. I don’t know what they would’ve done if anyone woke you up.”

“I… Wow. That's… Yeah,” he said, touched. “But you! You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Her voice sounded much firmer and stronger. Almost normal.

“I’m okay, surprisingly. Well, I’m still very weak though, and I’m not allowed to go anywhere except to the facilities. And Gad carried me there. Oh… But wait. We’re going to wake up the others. Help me up? We can go a bit farther.”

“Is that safe?” he asked her.

“I could really stretch my legs. I can walk, but no one’s let me,” she said.

“Hmm…”

“Come on!” she pleaded. “I’m going crazy. I’ve been in this spot for the whole day!”

“Ugh… Fine. But not too far, and if I see anything I don’t like, I’m carrying you back.”

“Yay!”

Nar stood up and stretched.

Oh… That doesn’t feel too bad.

His body was lighter. Looser. His mind clearer.

He raised a hand to his chest.

The emptiness. It’s gone…

“You alright?” Rel asked.

“Oh. Yes. Hold on.”

He stepped over Kur’s sleeping form and stood next to Rel.

“Can you lift me up? From under my arms?”

Nar bent down and passed his hands under her outstretched arms, then he lifted her. He tapped into his [Strength] a bit, to make sure that the movement was smooth and the least damaging as possible. Part of him still wondered if he should be enabling this.

“Oh… Things are moving. Hold on.”

“Oh, my Crystal! I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you!” Nar panicked.

“Relax! It’s already getting better.”

She hooked her arm on his and dropped her body weight onto him.

“Come on!” she whispered. “Let’s go towards the hole.”

Nar frowned. “Why there?”

“I think that’s where the Gates are going to show up from. Come on!”

Together, they silently and very slowly walked away from the two parties.

“We’ve all been bumping ideas,” she said. “So far, we think Row’s one is the best. She thinks that a bridge is going to show up, to let us cross towards the Gates once the Ceremony is over. But people are split on whether the bridge crossing is going to be the actual thing.”

Nar grimaced. “Talking about bridges gives me a bad feeling.”

“That’s what Mul keeps saying.”

“You don’t think the System will make us fight for it, do you?” Nar muttered.

“I hope not! We’ve made it all the way here already!” she said. “What more do we have to give? What more do we have to prove?”

“More like how much more do we still need to suffer,” Nar said.

Rel stared at him.

His story was still fresh in her mind. It had been much worse than she had expected. Much, much worse. She had thought they were exaggerating about it, but, if anything, had been the opposite.

“If we have to fight, it will be… It will be something,” she whispered. “There’s thousands and thousands of us here. The bridge crossings never had more than three hundred Climbers, and those were hard enough to cross…”

Nar glanced back at the darkened crowd behind him. A battle involving all of those Climbers?

That would be too much… Right? Can you imagine?

“So, are you feeling better?” he asked instead, steering the conversation somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“Yes. I’m not sure why though,” she said.

“Is it the increased regen rates here?”

“Could be,” she said. “Or maybe my Yearning has decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. We’ve made it here, after all, and there isn’t anything at all that I can do to make things go any faster. Actually… That might just be the reason.”

“Very reasonable of it,” Nar said.

“Yeah… I don’t even have nightmares anymore, though I still feel like shit,” she said. “We’re right by the exit now, anyways, nothing is going to stop me. Stop us. In less than two days we’ll be getting out.”

“Finally.”

“Finally. I’m sick of corridors and of things trying to kill me.”

Nar nodded effusively.

“Oh, by the way, we all got gains. Two levels each again. Not bad considering we didn’t really do anything on our way here.”

“Oh, wow,” Nar said.

“Yeah. Maybe the System’s being nice to us.”

Nar snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“Who knows… We’ve been surprised before,” she said. “Anyways, do you want to check your gains?”

“Nah. I’ll do it later,” he said with a sigh.

“Hmmm… Nar?”

“Yes?”

“I’m tired.”

“Oh shit! Hold on, I’ll carry you.”

“Thanks.”

He deftly pulled her up to his back and adjusted her weight carefully.

“Can we keep going though? I’m really curious about it,” she said.

“Sure.”

They would probably not see anything in that impenetrable darkness, but Nar understood her desire to see it. He too felt a strange compulsion towards the massive void that was the final obstacle standing between them and their freedom.

Besides, it wasn’t far now.

“Wow. You really can’t see anything,” Rel said.

Nar stood sideways, well enough away from the railing that separated them from that potentially infinite fall.

“Nothing at all…” he said, more to himself than her.

He didn’t really expect to see anything down there, but he had still carried a little shard of hope.

“Can you believe that somewhere in that darkness, there’s our exit?” Rel asked. “Can you believe how close it is? In two days, we’ll be walking outside. Breathing the air from the O-Nex. Seeing the light and the color. And all the people, and everything else that’s out there…”

“I can’t wait for it.”

“Me neither. I… I really want to go outside and find out what is… Calling me.”

He felt her relax against his back.

Her breathing sounds much better too. I hope that thing will be patient. We’re almost there, now. We’re so close.

So close he almost didn’t believe it.

He looked out over the dark.

Please, Crystal, don’t make us fight for it. We’ve done enough already. We’ve given You enough. Atoned enough! Don’t You think so?

And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the ominous words Final Atonement evoked in him. Nothing had been easy in their entire Climb. Why should its ending be any different?