Chapter 368 - 359 — The Passage of Relics III (Bonus)

Chapter 368: Chapter 359 — The Passage of Relics III (Bonus)

James had eleven of them on the right-hand route in the first ninety seconds and it was, by the standards of the last month, easy work.

They were fast and they were fragile and he had both hands and a sword.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]` ×2

`[MANA: 2,980 / 3,100]`

`[GALLERY THRALLS SLAIN ×6]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +180]`

And for the first time in three floors there were bodies on the ground in front of him.

`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA] ×2`

`[MANA: 2,900 / 3,100]`

He put both of them at the top of the ramp behind him and felt something unknot in his chest that had been knotted since Floor 36.

---

He noticed the dark about four minutes in.

It came in at the edges of his vision first — not shadow, a *thickening*, the way a room looks when you have been reading in bad light for too long. He blinked it away twice before he stopped assuming it was his eyes.

Then a line came up.

`[ACCUMULATING — 22%]`

No name. No description. A percentage, in a colour the Tower did not use for anything good, and it went to 24% while he was looking at it.

James kept fighting, because nothing had happened yet. His hands worked. His feet worked. There was a Thrall in front of him and it died the way Thralls died.

At 40% the edges came in far enough that he lost a Thrall on his left and only found it again when it hit his hip plate.

"Maeve—"

"I’ve got it too," she said, immediately. "Mine’s at thirty-one and it went up four while I was saying that."

"Is it on Finn?"

"*Finn.*"

"*I’VE GOT IT,*" Finn bellowed, from the far side of twelve metres of solid stone. "Cillian’s got it. What is it?"

"I don’t know."

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:03:12]`

Ronan came up the right-hand ramp at a run, which for Ronan meant a fast walk with intent.

"You’ve the dark on you."

"Everybody’s got the dark on us."

"Then I’ll try this," said Ronan, and put the disc up.

He got his arm out and turned the face of it outward and the shallow channels in the stone filled with light, and something went out from him in a low dome about five metres across.

James was three metres away and inside it.

The edges of his vision came back all at once. It was not gradual — the thickening simply stopped being there, and the gallery got brighter, and he could see the far wall again.

`[ACCUMULATING — 40% → 0%]`

"*That’s* what it does," said Ronan.

Maeve came four steps sideways into the dome and stood in it for about two seconds and came out clean.

"Five metres," she said. "That’s five metres and it’s round you. It doesn’t reach anything."

---

"*RONAN.*"

Finn, from the left, over the noise.

"Ronan, we’re at sixty — Cillian’s at *sixty-eight* and he’s stopped shooting straight—"

Ronan looked at James.

He did not say anything. He just looked at him, with the disc up and a dome of clean air five metres across and two people standing in it, and he was waiting to be told, and there was only one right answer and both of them knew what it cost.

"Go," said James.

"You’ll be back up at forty inside three minutes."

"I’ll be back up at forty inside three minutes and they’re at sixty-eight *now*." He was already turning back to the ramp. "Go. And come back."

Ronan went.

It took him about twenty seconds to cross, because crossing meant going all the way back down the right-hand ramp, across the entrance floor, and up the left-hand one, and there was no way through the middle at all.

James watched the percentage start climbing again before Ronan was off the ramp.

`[ACCUMULATING — 6%]`

*Right,* he thought. *So that’s the floor.*

It was not the enemies. The Thralls were nothing. The Keepers were hard work and not frightening. The clock was a clock.

The floor was that there were two routes and one man who could clear the dark and one man who could read half the marks and one door at the top, and every single thing Team Zero needed to do required somebody to be somewhere that somebody else also needed them to be.

"Maeve. How long can you take it?"

"I’ve no idea. It hasn’t done anything yet except make me half blind."

"That’s what worries me."

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:38]`

`[ACCUMULATING — 19%]`

They pushed up the right-hand ramp and came out onto a level section thirty metres up with the pillars thinning out.

And forty metres ahead of them, standing on the ramp where it turned toward the landing, was a Keeper.

It was the same as the two below — three metres, overlapping plate to the floor, flat helm, stone maul — and it was standing still exactly the way the others had, waiting.

James could see it perfectly.

Across the gallery, on the other side of twelve metres of stone block, Finn’s voice came up over everything.

"*There’s one on ours as well.*"

"Can you see it?"

"I can see it. I can’t see *yours*."

---

James stopped where he was and worked it out, and did not like any part of it.

In the first gallery they had killed both Keepers, gathered in one place in front of one door, compared two columns and matched one mark. It had taken about four minutes and two-thirds of that had been him being slow.

They could not do that here.

Finn was carrying the Lens, which meant Finn had to be at whichever set of marks could not be read without it — and there was no telling which set that was until one of them was dead. Finn also could not hold an axe, which meant killing a Keeper on the left was Cillian, on his own, at range.

Ronan could not be in two places and had to be in both, on a fifty-second round trip, forever.

And somewhere in this gallery there was going to be another shielded thing whose entire job was to give them more clock, and the only person who could break its shell was the man carrying the Lens.

And the door at the top was not going to be one mark. He did not know that. He simply did not believe, after the first room, that the second one was going to ask him for the same thing.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:29]`

`[ACCUMULATING — 24%]`

"Finn," said James, and started walking at the Keeper on his own side with Durendal in both hands and two skeletons coming up the ramp behind him.

"Go on."

"Tell me everything you can see."