Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

DUM.

The drumbeat rolled down the road, low and hollow.

Then silence swallowed everything around it.

「 〔FLOOR QUEST〕

«The Last Procession»

Escort the Funeral Cart to the Bell House

Clear Conditions:

The funeral body must reach the Bell House intact.

—

The dead tolerate mourning.

They do not tolerate mistakes. 」

DUM.

Misha had never realized how loud a single drum could sound until it became the only noise twenty-eight people were allowed to make.

No conversation followed it, no boots scraped carelessly against stone, and nobody coughed without first burying their face against several layers of cloth. Even breathing seemed indecently loud after five minutes of listening to the same measured beat travel through an otherwise dead landscape.

DUM.

Alaric struck the drum again, exactly on time.

Misha glanced over her shoulder and saw him walking near the middle of the column where everybody could hear him equally well, a broad funeral drum strapped securely against his torso. For once, there was no grin on his face, and no theatrical misery over the indignity of physical labor. His attention remained fixed on the instrument, his gaze following the subtle rise and fall of his own hand.

DUM.

The second drummer walked beside him, not playing.

Dorian had explained the method before they entered Floor Twelve. The rhythm could not simply stop while tired arms were exchanged. There would be no empty second while one drummer handed the responsibility to another, and no whispered countdown.

When Alaric needed relief, the second drum would join the rhythm first, one beat matching the first, then another. Only when both instruments were landing perfectly together would Alaric stop since the rhythm would continue without interruption.

Later, the process would reverse.

DUM.

<The Saint Buried Upside Down> How nostalgic.

Misha's brow tightened when she read the comment. 'Nostalgic?'

She faced forward again. Floor Twelve stretched ahead of them beneath a colorless sky.

The road was almost perfectly straight, an old ceremonial path paved in pale gray stone and wide enough for two carts to pass side by side. Dead grass grew beyond its edges in uneven patches, brittle stalks bent beneath a wind that Misha would feel against her cloak but somehow could not hear.

That bothered her since there should have been sounds of grass moving, fabric fluttering, and wind slipping through cracked structures. Instead, the Floor seemed to absorb everything except the drum.

DUM.

Along both sides of the road, figures knelt. Hundreds of them.

The first time Misha had seen one, she thought it was a statue, but that illusion lasted until they passed close enough for her to see the fingernails. They were brown, split, and still embedded with old dirt.

The Husher knelt perhaps three meters from the roadside with both knees pressed into the dead earth. Its spine was perfectly straight despite the decay visible along its back. Both hands were clasped together beneath its chin as if caught in prayer. Its face had been turned toward the road, or toward them.

Misha was trying very hard not to decide which.

The corpses wore the remains of ceremonial clothes that might once have been black. Time had bleached them gray and eaten holes through the fabric. Skin stretched tightly across its cheekbones, yellow-brown and dry enough to resemble old parchment. Its lips had receded from the teeth.

Every Husher's eyes were closed, but Misha did not find that comforting after what she learned from Dorian.

DUM.

She walked past it without changing pace. When she glanced back several steps later, the corpse looked exactly the same, motionless. Then she looked ahead again, her shoulders loosened by a fraction.

DUM.

The group had been arranged differently from the way they normally traveled. Hiiro and Caius were at the very front with two Blackthorn members.

Normally, Misha would have objected to putting either of them there. Caius was still recovering, and Hiiro would always run toward danger. But the front position required eyes more than strength.

Hiiro could react quickly, Caius noticed things, and neither was expected to engage unless absolutely necessary. Misha had made that last part clear through hand gestures before they left with the funeral cart.

The Tower had somehow transformed her into a babysitter when it handed her these kids.

DUM.

The two Blackthorn members walked ahead of them carrying hooked poles wrapped in cloth. Their job was not combat either. Loose debris had to be moved without letting stone scrape stone. Hanging pieces of metal had to be stabilized before the group passed.

Anything capable of producing an irregular sound became a threat.

The funeral cart itself had presented the most obvious problem, its wheels creaked.

Dorian had warned them before entry. They had tested grease, cloth, leather wrapping, but nothing guaranteed silence for five straight hours, so they abandoned the wheels entirely.

Now, six men and women carried the cart on their shoulders. The old wooden platform held the ceremonial body required by the Floor Quest, wrapped from head to foot beneath a faded gray shroud. Four lifting poles had been bound beneath the frame, padded with torn blankets so wood would not grind against armor or buckles.

Another six people walked close enough to rotate in, at the same time they supported the injured while it was not yet their turn.

DUM.

They had been walking for two hours.

At the rear, she traveled with Astrid and Dorian.

Dorian stayed slightly closer to the road's center so he could see the entire column, Astrid watched the left flank, and Misha watched the right and occasionally looked backward to make sure nothing behind them had changed.

So far, nothing had. That was precisely why she distrusted it.

The Hushers did not twitch, did not follow them with their heads. They simply knelt in endless rows, sometimes alone, sometimes in small clusters arranged around ruined shrines or dead trees.

There were children among them.

Misha had noticed that during the first hours, and she wished she had not.

One small corpse knelt beside what might once have been its mother, tiny fingers laced together with the same horrible precision as the adults. Another wore the remains of a ribbon around its wrist.

She stopped looking closely after that. Dead adults were easier to look at.

DUM.

The families traveling with Dorian had their own problems.

A seven-year-old boy near the middle of the group had begun dragging his feet forty minutes ago, and his mother noticed it.

The woman tapped his shoulder, pointed toward herself, then crouched.

The boy shook his head stubbornly, but the woman gave him a look every child on earth probably understood regardless of language, apocalypse, or dimensional Tower.

"Do not argue with me."

He climbed onto her back, wrapping around her shoulders, and she stood again with visible effort.

Ten minutes later, his head rested against her neck.

Another child was already being carried by her father, legs locked around his waist while he continued forward with one arm supporting her beneath the thighs.

Nobody complained, or more accurately, nobody could.

DUM.

The injured were doing better than expected even if others could barely walk. That had been one of the few pieces of good luck Exodus had given them.

One Blackthorn member moved with his arm secured tightly against his chest. Another leaned heavily against a woman beside him, their shoulders bound together by a strip of cloth so a stumble would not separate them. An older survivor used a staff whose bottom had been wrapped so heavily in leather that it landed against stone with almost no sound.

DUM.

The rhythm had become something her body measured unconsciously. Misha no longer needed to count since her footfalls adjusted between beats.

So did everyone else's.

The entire group had begun moving inside the drum's cadence.

Step. Step.

DUM.

Step. Step.

DUM.

Dorian had originally described the funeral rhythm as something to remain steady enough for the Hushers to tolerate, but Alaric had made it more useful than that since he subtly settled the cadence into their walking speed.

It was not enough to change the ritual, but enough to make the ritual carry them.

Misha glanced toward him again.

His face remained calm, and his mallet rose the same distance every time.

DUM.

There was something unsettling about seeing him competent without the noise he normally built around himself.

DUM.

Three hours.

The landscape changed gradually. Dead grass gave way to blackened soil, and the road narrowed. Ruined stone structures began appearing farther from the path–roofless houses, broken arches, and foundations without walls. None stood close enough to block their movement.

The Hushers became more numerous. Ten meters between bodies became five, then three, then some knelt almost shoulder to shoulder.

The corpse nearest her wore rusted armor, its hands were clasped around the broken shaft of a spear.

Three steps later, she looked back, and her pulse jumped.

The Husher's head seemed–No, same angle. Probably.

Misha couldn't help but stare for a few more seconds just to make sure it didn't move.

Astrid touched her forearm, and Misha turned. The girl pointed toward her own eyes, then toward the road ahead.

"Watch forward."

Misha pointed backward once.

Astrid glanced, then shook her head slightly.

That's right, she was probably imagining things.

At the next scheduled rotation, Dorian lifted one hand, then closed his fist. The signal passed forward person by person without a sound, and the cart carriers prepared.

Misha watched from the rear.

One replacement moved beneath the right pole, and hands took weight.

One of the original carriers loosened his grip, and for one terrible moment, the funeral cart tilted, and the shrouded corpse shifted less than an inch.

The new carrier corrected immediately.

<First Mourner Beneath Creation> Do not let him touch the ground.

<The Saint Buried Upside Down> Oh? You know the corpse?

<First Mourner Beneath Creation> I do. I simply never expected to find a remnant of his world here.

<The Last Survivor of an Unwritten World> That sounds almost sentimental coming from you. How alarming.

<First Mourner Beneath Creation> Once, ten thousand hands carried him so he would never have to walk alone. It would be a poor ending for him to fall now with no one there to catch him.

<The Saint Buried Upside Down> Well, now I want to know who he was.

Pressing her lips together beneath the mask, Misha reread the messages once.

Ten thousand hands? That was far too specific to be some dramatic nonsense The First Mourner had invented for entertainment.

Her gaze shifted toward the funeral cart. Whoever he had been before ending up here, apparently even something as ancient as the First Mourner remembered him.

'Great. Another mysterious corpse with lore.'

DUM.

Misha only realized she had stopped breathing after the rotation finished. She slowly exhaled through her nose.

When Dorian glanced at her, she pointed at the cart then held her hand flat and move it downward.

"Slower next time."

That was the closest they had come to trouble, so far.