Chapter 374 - 365 — The Final Gallery I

Chapter 374: Chapter 365 — The Final Gallery I

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:05:54]`

James read the room before anybody moved.

The starting platform was eleven metres square. From its edge, two routes went out over the dark. The right one began with a gap of about two metres onto a broad island, fifteen metres off, slightly lower. The left one began further along with a longer gap onto a narrow ledge that ran away toward a cluster of rock.

Beyond those, sixty metres out, two small chambers had been cut into free-hanging masses of stone, one on each side — enclosed, with a single opening facing the middle.

Between them, a scatter of central islands at different heights. The highest of those sat under a low stone roof, like a porch with nothing attached to it.

And past all of it, on a ledge a long way off, the door.

Cold air came up past the edge of the platform from below. There was grit loose on the stone near the lip, and it moved under James’s boot when he stepped closer, and he stepped back again.

---

Four Thralls stood on the right-hand island under a blight. Four more stood out on the left ledge under another.

Behind both groups, higher, on islands that looked down across the routes, Slingers were already reloading.

`[BLIGHTED THRALL]` ×8

`[STONE SLINGER]` ×5

James had the Cage in both hands and no sword and no casting, and he did the sum once.

*Nothing in here can be killed until I’ve been to it. Whoever’s standing next to me matters more than whoever’s hitting things.*

"We can’t make two teams out of five," he said. "So we don’t try. Maeve, Cillian — stay here and keep the left ledge busy and the Slingers off my back. Finn, Ronan, with me, right side. When I’ve done that one I cross to you."

"How do you cross to us?" said Cillian.

James looked at the central islands and found the route: right island, two short jumps into the middle, then left onto the ledge.

"Through the middle."

---

Finn went first.

He took the gap onto the right-hand island at a run and landed in the middle of a Thrall that had moved to meet him on the landing point, and he did not fight it, because he could not hurt it. He put his shoulder into it and drove it three metres back off the edge of where people needed to land.

Ronan waited until Finn had the landing clear. Then he crossed with the Ward held tight to his chest.

A stone came down across the gap two metres in front of James.

It came from a Slinger on an island high on the right. Before James could say anything, a white line went up from the starting platform behind him and hit that Slinger in the chest, and it went back from the edge.

"*Got him*," said Cillian.

On the left, another Slinger had started moving along its island toward a better angle on the starting platform. Maeve was already putting violet into the ledge under its feet and it stopped to deal with her.

Neither of them had waited to be asked.

James crossed.

---

Something jumped at the same time.

He saw it at the edge of his eye as his back foot left the stone — a Thrall on the island to the right of the landing, low, gathering, then in the air on a line that ended exactly where James was going to put his feet.

Finn saw it too.

He came across the landing and met the Thrall in the air with both axes crossed. He could not hurt it, but he could hit it, and he hit it sideways. It went down on the stone two metres to the left of where James landed instead of on top of him.

James landed. Grit went under his boot. The edge was a metre and a half behind him.

"Thanks."

"Go," said Finn.

He went. The blight hung four metres over the four Thralls on the far side of the island, turning in on itself, and James walked under it with Ronan’s shield on his left and lifted the Cage.

`[BLIGHT DRAWN]`

`[BLIGHTED THRALL — IMMUNE — REMOVED]` ×4

Finn and Ronan went into them before the dark had finished going into the Cage.

---

James turned round and looked across the gap at the left ledge.

Maeve and Cillian had kept the four Thralls over there looking the wrong way for ninety seconds, and they had not taken a point of damage off any of them, because nobody could.

To get there he had to go back toward the middle, down two short jumps onto the central islands, and then left.

`[ACCUMULATING — 31%]`

Ronan saw his number and started after him.

"*No*," said James. "Stay with Finn."

"You’ll be at fifty before you’re across."

"And if you come with me, Finn’s on his own with four and a Slinger over his head, and this island falls apart behind us." He was already moving. "I’ve got time. I’ll come back to you."

Ronan stayed.

---

Cillian saw him coming and switched without being told. He stopped plinking at the Thralls he could not hurt and put everything into the highest Slinger on the left, the one with a line across the central islands. Maeve came off the starting platform to the head of the left gap and stood there, which gave James a place to land where somebody was already standing.

He came down the two central jumps and across the left gap and landed a metre from her.

`[ACCUMULATING — 48%]`

He did not stop. He went down the ledge to the second blight and put the Cage up.

`[BLIGHT DRAWN]`

Maeve and Cillian killed all four Thralls in about thirty seconds.

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:04:21]`

The side chambers opened.

A Keeper came out of each of them into the mouth of its chamber and stood there with its maul grounded.

`[GALLERY KEEPER]` ×2

"Right," said James. "Maeve, with me — left one. Finn, Ronan, you’ve got yours. Cillian, the middle. Go wherever it’s going worse."

He could not hit anything, so he did the other job. He stood in front of the Keeper and made it swing at him and gave ground when it swung, so that its attention was never on Maeve. Maeve did the rest — brand, strike, brand, strike — and it took a little over a minute.

On the other side, Finn took the Keeper apart at the helm join and Ronan stood on the only route back to the middle so nothing could get behind him.

Both went down within seconds of each other.

"Wedge, broken ring, crescent," said James, reading his through the Cage.

"Spiral, broken ring, three-bar," said Cillian.

"Broken ring," said Maeve.

---

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:44]`

The Glass Knight came up on the highest island, under the low roof.

Finn saw it first. He was two gaps away from it, on the wrong side of the right-hand island, with his number at fifty-two.

He started moving.

Ronan started after him.

"*Ronan, don’t,*" said Maeve. "Middle island. The big central one. Get on it and stay on it."

"He’s at fifty—"

"Everybody’s going to be at fifty in a minute. If you’re in the middle, all of us can get to you. If you’re chasing him, only he can." She did not look round. "*Middle.*"

Ronan looked at James.

"She’s right," said James.

Ronan went to the middle.

---

Finn got across the first gap onto the platform below the roof and something fired down at him from a Slinger on the far side.

He went behind a low stone wall at the front of the covered island — waist-high, the only cover on it — and the stone burst against the other side.

The second one did not hit the wall. It came in over the top, under the roof, and burst on the floor of the island two metres from him, and the roof was about a metre and a half above his head. There was nowhere to go up and not much room to go sideways.

He went sideways anyway. Round the end of the wall, low, as the burst finished, with the Lens up in both hands.

"*Got the angle*—"

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:02:31]`

The first beam took the shell off. The second one killed it.

`[GLASS KNIGHT — SLAIN]`

`[+00:01:00]`

`[COUNTDOWN: 00:03:31]`

"*That’s the clock,*" said Cillian.