An arm coils around the Anti-Wau's neck: it is Tohil, who has leapt onto the giant from behind. Clumsily, he pulls out a combat knife sharpened like a razor, but it slips on the metal torso.
"Run, girl!" he shouts.
With a psi vibration, the Anti-Wau pins Ada to the ground in a prison of terror. He pulls Tohil off with one arm and throws him as if he weighed nothing. Upon landing, something cracks inside the admiral.
The Anti-Wau no longer looks at Ada. His eyes are fixed far behind her: on the road. The silhouette of another giant.
The Wau.
Even frozen in terror, Ada regains hope.
"I'm going to kill the girl," the Anti-Wau declares mentally.
The Wau continues his slow predator's walk. He extends a hand toward the Anti-Wau. He mentally recounts to him an episode of mutilation and horror that paralyzes him in return. Fear against fear-but above all stream against mountain: when the Wau closes his fist, his opponent collapses to his knees, then onto the ground, unconscious.
Ada stands up and runs into the Wau's arms, and he does not stop walking… he sets his hand on her head, simply saying:
"You're all right, Ada. It's okay."
His walk is slow and his armor seems worn. Even his voice sounds like that of a half-functional robot. For the first time, Gorylkin has the impression that he is not well at all.
"Are you going to die, Wau?"
"You want us to fight now, Gorylkin? Our final battle."
"No…"
The Wau kneels before Tohil's body. The latter has his eyes closed, his face tense, his breathing wheezing. A scan shows a collapse of his ribcage.
He opens his hand and releases nanorobots that go repair the Admiral, while applying pressure points. A red signal appears in the visor display, never seen before: his reserve of repair nanorobots is nearly empty. It must be said that they have been working nonstop for weeks.
Ada approaches in small steps:
"I want you to live, Wau."
"Forever?"
"Yes, maybe we'll fight one day, but it will be pretend."
"May the Blind Gods hear you, Gorylkin. In fact, they certainly hear us. They are close."
The admiral's tension drops. He tries to speak, and the Wau interrupts him:
"You're in bad shape, but you'll be able to walk in a few hours. I'm going to hide you from the enemies' sight. Focus on your breathing. You have done excellent work, Admiral. I'll take over."
The Wau picks up the body, trying to preserve the integrity of the skeleton, and sets it down in the cold recess of a large dwelling. With Wau art, he pulverizes the ground into a layer of dust more comfortable than hard stone.
Then he resumes the road, with Ada, Alpha, and Kukth, toward the great tower. They are exhausted and say nothing, but in some way, they are happy to be together.
On the path, other Anti-Wau will appear. The Wau will not even slow down. Each time, they will collapse under a psychic attack. Inside her exosuit, Cassandre-recently returned from the dead, her heart in pieces, and almost without hope-no longer even computes her fatigue. The Armor, like a living being, seems just as exhausted, and injects its last surges of transient magic to keep its bearer alive.
The avenue leads to the staircase encircling the tower. On the first step, a man in a jumpsuit, dead on the spot. He has a whole set of recording equipment with him, somewhat old. He appears to have died three days ago, with his short beard and tied-back hair, and gives off a nauseating smell.
Ada and the Wau look at him. The young woman declares:
"That's David Ilsner."
"You know David Ilsner, do you?" replies the Wau without emotion, before focusing on the mysterious man whose anti-entropy machine had erased his existence in a world where everyone was remembered. "Rest in peace, David. No one will forget you anymore."
"He thought he was a genius."
"I think he was. And so are you, Gorylkin. Not a day goes by without you impressing me."
And the two of them began the slow ascent of more than 30,000 steps, all human-sized-a detail that would have surprised more than one, but it was a day ill-suited to reflection.
"Wau, you said I would be judged for… what I did."
"Yes."
"Is it going to be difficult? Will they hurt me? You said I would judge myself, right? Do you think that at some point-boom-my head will explode because I'll realize I did something serious?"
"Gorylkin… the day your trial comes, call me, all right? Don't think about it beyond that. You contact me."
"And you save me?"
"And I defend you."
The group made many breaks, and the height quickly became vertiginous. Sometimes, gusts of wind, or even blasts of water from an ocean whipped up by monstrous tides, threatened to throw them into the void, but the Wau managed to dig his metal fingers into the rock to hold on.
During one of these breaks, Ada, trembling with cold, declared:
"I think we need to close The Empyrean Gates. Or destroy them."
"That is what the Aleph wants, Gorylkin."
"I doubt it. If he said it, it's because he wants you to believe it. As soon as there's something stupid to do, he does it. And opening the gates, I think, is a bad idea."
"What's behind the Gates, Gorylkin?"
"Wau, use your metal head for two minutes. Why do we LOCK things up? I was locked up in a CRA, you know. I know what pre-stellar prisons are like. We lock up dangerous things. Tigers. Look at the size of this tower. Behind the gate, there's something nasty, you know."
"The rifle," the Wau says. "We Wau believe that the Transients have a rifle, somewhere. A rifle that can kill Transients."
"Same thing. A giant tiger that eats everything, Transients and planets."
The Wau stood up. He seemed to be speaking to someone else. He declared: "Of course. I'll pull you out of there."
He motioned for Ada to stand.
"Who are you talking to?"
"Admiral Andreï."
"Admiral? That sounds important. How are his weird projects going?"
"Well, he's alive. That's already something."
They climbed another hundred steps, and he added:
"You assume, Gorylkin, that these gates imprison something and that we would be on the outside. But have you considered that what the gates imprison, perhaps, is us?"
And they said nothing more for the last ten thousand steps.