Chapter 373 - 364 — Across the Abyss II

Chapter 373: Chapter 364 — Across the Abyss II

The second pair came off the top of the routes, near the final approach, and they were not interesting.

Finn and Ronan took one. James put the Lens onto the Slingers supporting the other until it was alone. Cillian stayed out of all of it with the Cage held close, because the room was open now and there was nothing left for it to do except not go into a hole.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:26]`

"Crescent, spiral, ring-with-a-cross," said Finn.

"Crescent, wedge, broken ring," said James.

"*Crescent*," said Maeve. "And open eye from the first pair. That’s both."

---

James already had the Lens on the centre platform.

He had put it there when the second Keeper started to go down, because the first Glass Knight had come up on that exact square of stone and there was no reason on earth for the second one to come up anywhere else.

It came up on that exact square of stone.

The shell was gone before it had finished standing up.

`[GLASS KNIGHT — SLAIN]`

`[+00:01:00]`

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:17]`

"Oh, that’s *nasty*," said Cillian, with real admiration. "You were just sitting there."

"It had to come from somewhere."

---

The door was at the top of the upper section, fifteen marks in three rows.

Maeve read them off in four words. "Open eye, top right. Crescent, bottom left."

Ronan hit them, one after the other, with the edge of the shield, because he was closest and it was quicker than waiting for Cillian.

Both lit.

The rest went out, and the door went into the walls.

James stood at the back with the Lens pointed down the gallery until everybody else was through.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:01:52]`

---

Finn stopped dead two steps into the antechamber with his arm out.

He did not say anything. There were six of them on the floor between the doorway and the pedestals, grey and taut and heaving along, and everybody behind him stopped without being told why.

Cillian cleared them from the doorway in about fifteen seconds.

`[BLOATS SLAIN ×6]`

---

James went straight across the chamber to the pedestals before the last black mark had finished smoking.

`[RELIC DEPOSITED]`

`[BEARER RESTRICTED — 00:05:00]`

Maeve put the Ward down eleven seconds behind him and Cillian put the Cage down eleven seconds after that.

`[COUNTDOWN RESET]`

And the room was quiet.

`[STONE SLINGERS SLAIN ×4]`

`[BLIGHTED THRALLS SLAIN ×15]`

`[GALLERY KEEPERS SLAIN ×4]`

`[GLASS KNIGHTS SLAIN ×2]`

`[BLOATS SLAIN ×6]`

`[EXP GAINED: 15,000]`

`[JAMES GANNER — EXP: 52,685 / 84,000]`

`[MANA: 2,720 / 3,100]`

He had not cast once since the second antechamber. He had not had a free hand.

---

Nobody said anything about the gallery.

Finn sat down on the edge of an empty pedestal and put his left hand flat against his own ribs where the maul had caught him two rooms ago, and pressed, and winced, and took the hand away.

Ronan went back to the doorway and stood in it, looking out over the gap — at the four platforms, and the spur, and the square of stone in the middle — for about a minute, without moving.

Cillian lay down on the floor.

Maeve stood with her hands on her hips and her head back and breathed through her nose, because she had been moving for eleven minutes without stopping once.

---

Through the far door James could see the last gallery, and it was not a room.

It was the gap.

Everything else had been routes with a hole between them. This was a hole with bits of route in it — platforms hanging in the air at different heights over a dark that went down further than anything they had crossed yet, some of them two metres across and some of them twenty, joined by nothing, and rising and falling toward a sealed door on a ledge a very long way off.

There were figures on the platforms already. And on one of the furthest of them, turning slowly in on itself, a blight.

"Right," said James. "Lockouts."

`[BEARER RESTRICTED — 00:03:41]`

"Mine’s three forty-one," he said. "Maeve’s and Cillian’s are behind me. Finn, Ronan—"

"We’re clear," said Finn. "Ours ran out on the spur."

"Then you’re the Lens and you’re the Ward. And I take the Cage when mine’s gone."

"You’re taking the Cage," said Cillian, from the floor, with enormous satisfaction. "You’re going to walk *at* things."

"I’m aware."

---

They waited three minutes and forty-one seconds.

Cillian spent them telling James four things about the Cage — keep it close, don’t swing it, it gets heavier when it’s full, and the dark in the middle moves when you’re near one — and James listened to all four.

`[BEARER RESTRICTED — 00:00:00]`

Finn took the Lens. Ronan took the Ward.

James lifted the Cage off the pedestal and it was lighter than he expected and the dark thing in the middle of it was not attached to anything.

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:06:00]`

---

They went through the door.

The first platform was eleven metres square and solid under his boots, and from there James could see most of it.

Nine separate platforms going away over the dark at all heights — a broad one ahead and below, three narrow ones stepping up to the right, a long thin one going off left. None of them touching. The gaps ranged from a stride to something he would not have tried on a good day.

Figures were standing on four of them.

And the blight was on the furthest one to the right, three platforms up and two across, hanging over a group of Thralls, with no straight line to it from anywhere he could see.

James looked down once.

There was nothing under the platforms at all. No floor, no light, no bottom. Just a dark that went down until his eyes gave up on it.

He looked back up and closed his hand on the grip of the Cage.

Across the gap, the first figures started to move.