Chapter 367 - 358 — The Passage of Relics II

Chapter 367: Chapter 358 — The Passage of Relics II

What followed was eleven seconds of the worst communication Team Zero had managed in about a year, and it was nobody’s fault and it happened anyway.

"Left column, top to bottom," James called. "Give it to me."

"Crescent, spiral, bar," said Finn.

"That’s not what I saw."

"That’s what’s there—"

"Finn, I read it as bar, crescent, spiral—"

"Then you read it wrong."

"*Stop*," said Maeve.

She had come down the right-hand route and was standing in the middle of the floor with one hand up.

"Both of you stop. Forget the order. The order does not matter and you’re going to spend the rest of the clock arguing about which one’s on top." She pointed at Finn. "Don’t tell me positions. Tell me *marks*. What three things are in your column?"

"A crescent, a spiral and the three-bar one."

"James. What three things are in yours?"

"A wedge, a spiral, an eye."

Maeve did not even pause.

"Spiral. It’s in both. That’s the only one that’s in both."

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:52]`

And then something came up out of the floor on the raised step in the middle of the room, nine metres from the door.

It was bigger than a Thrall and smaller than a Keeper — two and a half metres, lean, in segmented plate, with a long-hafted axe in one hand.

And there was a shell round it.

James could see it clearly from eleven metres: a skin of something over the whole body, transparent and faintly rippling, close-fitted, about a hand’s width off the plate at every point.

`[GLASS KNIGHT]`

`[LEVEL: 64]`

`[HP: 9,800 / 9,800]`

"I’m on it," said Cillian.

`[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING STRIKE]`

The bolt hit the shell and went *sideways* — it slid round the curve of it and came off the far side and went into the wall, and the Glass Knight did not so much as turn its head.

`[GLASS KNIGHT — HP: 9,800 / 9,800]`

"That’s not ideal," said Cillian.

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:31]`

James looked at the door, and at the shielded thing standing between them and it, and at the number falling across the middle of his vision, and he understood the shape of the room about ninety seconds later than he should have.

*It’s not guarding the door. It’s not in the way of anything.*

*It’s the clock.*

He brought the Lens up.

The pale light came into the socket and went out of it and hit the shell dead centre, and the shell did not slide it anywhere. It held for about half a second and then came apart — not shattered, *unmade*, the whole skin of it going at once from the point of contact outward.

`[GLASS KNIGHT — HP: 9,800 / 6,200]`

The second beam killed it.

`[GLASS KNIGHT — SLAIN]`

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:04]`

`[+00:01:00]`

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:04]`

Everybody in that gallery saw the number go up.

"*It gives you time,*" said Maeve.

"It gives you time."

---

James stood there for one second longer than he could afford, because the whole thing had just arranged itself in his head and he did not like the shape of it.

He had assumed that killing the two Keepers would open the door. It had not. That assumption had cost them the four seconds he had spent staring at a closed door, and the eleven seconds of the argument about column order, and a good chunk of the thirty he had spent working out what the relic did.

Nearly a minute, out of four and a half, on things that were not the puzzle.

And the floor had put a clock on it and then put the answer to the clock nine metres from the door, shielded, where only the relic could reach it.

*It’s not a fight. It’s been telling us that since the door opened and I’ve been treating it like a fight.*

"Nobody chase anything," he said. "There’s still Thralls in here and I don’t care about any of them. Cillian—"

"Spiral," said Cillian. "I know. I’m looking at it."

---

He was three metres from the door with his hand up.

There were fifteen marks in three rows and the spiral was fourth from the left on the middle row, and Cillian put a short bolt into it.

It lit.

And the other fourteen went out, all at once, and the door came apart down the middle and went into the walls.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:38]`

"*Go,*" said James.

---

They went through together and the door shut behind them, and the counter stopped.

The chamber beyond was small — ten metres square, low, with another door in the far wall and nothing else in it except two pedestals.

The nearer one was empty, with a cradle in the top of it the exact shape of the thing in James’s hands.

The far one was not.

Lying in it was an object about the size of a serving tray: a broad disc of the same pale stone, thicker at the centre than the edge, with a deep grip cut into the back of it and a spiral of shallow channels worked into the face.

James put the Lens down in the empty cradle.

`[RELIC DEPOSITED]`

`[COUNTDOWN RESET]`

The numbers went off his vision and the room was very quiet.

---

"Everybody," said Maeve, and went round them.

Finn had taken a maul across the back and had a bruise coming up through the armour that she made him show her. Cillian had nothing and was breathing hard. Ronan had held a twenty-one-thousand-hit-point thing on his own for ninety seconds and had a dent in the new shield to show for it, which he was already looking at with an expression of personal grievance.

James had a shallow cut across the outside of the thigh from a Thrall he had never seen.

`[JAMES GANNER — HP: 1,940 / 2,048]`

`[MANA: 3,100 / 3,100]`

Full. He had not cast once in the entire gallery, because he had not had a hand free.

`[GALLERY KEEPERS SLAIN ×2]`

`[GLASS KNIGHT SLAIN]`

`[GALLERY THRALLS SLAIN ×9]`

`[EXP GAINED: 6,600]`

`[JAMES GANNER — EXP: 21,445 / 84,000]`

No clear reward. Of course there was no clear reward. There was another door.

---

James went to pick the Lens back up.

His hand went round the grip and stopped about a centimetre off the stone, the way a hand stops when the arm has decided against it, and a line came up across his vision.

`[RELIC — THE LENS]`

`[BEARER RESTRICTED — 00:15:00]`

"Oh, that’s clever," he said, with considerable feeling.

"What?"

"I can’t take it back. Fifteen minutes." He stepped away from the pedestal. "I put it down, so now it’s somebody else’s."

"Fifteen minutes is longer than the last room took," said Maeve.

"Fifteen minutes is longer than the last *two* rooms took."

Finn was already at the pedestal. "I’ll take it."

"You know it’s two hands."

"I know it’s two hands."

"You won’t be able to hold an axe."

"James," said Finn, "I’ve watched you shoot two things through the head with a stick. I’ll manage."

---

Ronan took the disc.

He did it without asking anybody, which was the correct thing, and he got it out of the cradle and his arm through the grip on the back of it and turned it over twice.

"It’s a shield."

"It’s a *shape* that’s a shield," said Maeve. "What’s it for?"

"Won’t know till something happens." He settled it. "It’s not for hitting. There’s no rim on it and the face is all channel — you’d break your own hand."

Nobody had a better theory. He kept it.

---

"Right," said Maeve. "New problem."

She pointed at Finn.

"He’s carrying the beam, which means he can’t use an axe, which means we have not got a frontline anymore. Not a proper one. Ronan’s got the other thing and we don’t know what it does yet, so I’m not counting on him either."

"So the frontline is me," said James.

"The frontline is you and it’s going to have to be, because you’re the only one with two free hands who can hit something."

He turned that over and found he did not mind it.

"Fine. I’ll take the middle and hold whatever comes through it. Finn, you’ve got the beam — that means you’re the answer to anything with a shell on it and you’re the only one who can read half the marks, so don’t get dragged into a scrum. Ronan, you go wherever that thing turns out to be needed. Cillian, same as always."

"Same as always," said Cillian. "Brilliant. Love it."

---

Finn and Ronan lifted them together, and the far door went into the walls.

The second gallery was bigger and it went *up*.

It was a hundred and fifty metres deep and wide enough that the two routes were properly separated — not a spine this time but a broad central block of stonework rising out of the middle of the floor, twelve metres high, with a route climbing along each side of it.

Both routes went up in steps and ramps. Both of them had pillars along the outer walls and raised firing platforms at intervals. Both of them ran to the top of the central block, where they came together on a shared landing in front of another sealed door.

You could not see one route from the other. You could not see the far end from the entrance. From where James was standing he could see maybe forty metres up the right-hand ramp and nothing at all of the left.

"That’s a lot worse," said Cillian.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:05:00]`

---

They split without discussion.

Finn went left with Cillian. James went right with Maeve. Ronan came in behind all of them and stopped in the middle of the entrance floor, where both ramps were in reach.

"I’ll be in the middle," he said. "Shout and I’ll come."

And then they were fighting, because the Thralls came down both ramps at once.