Chapter 144: Trial Ship

"Stop dragging him," Scarlett said. "He is going to bleed on your boots."

"I am not dragging him," Alexander said. "I am carrying him upward at a reasonable angle."

"He's on his back."

"Then he will have the best view."

The best view was the inside of the Rook warship, and the warship was unfolding. Mechanical sighs rolled through the hull as its iron skin peeled back, and the vessel stood itself upright above Manhattan like a black tower with a hundred floors, every one of them a caged deck, a hanging bridge, or a chain elevator rattling through a vertical gut lit by the angry red of a forge.

[TRIAL SHIP: ROOK VESSEL OF CHAMPIONS]

[DECKS: 100. CAGES: UNCOUNTED]

[LANDING ON THE SAFE ZONE: 12 MINUTES]

Jace tried to stand. His body refused.

[HEALTH: 12/420. CHARGE: 1/140]

The six combat skills Alexander had cut from him hung inside Jace like locked doors. Mutual Shelter remained beyond Alexander's reach, and the only weapon answering Jace was the red seal burning across his palm. Overhead, the lower decks split open and armored beasts poured out in a roaring flood: iron-masked wolves taller than horses, plated bears with anvils for knuckles, and siege rams that walked on four legs and apologized to nobody.

[IRONMASK WOLF PACK: LEVEL 380, 41 UNITS]

[PLATED BEAR: LEVEL 395, 12 UNITS]

[SIEGE RAM: LEVEL 420, 3 UNITS]

Through the bars of the nearest cell, Jace saw the first prisoners. A woman in a torn robe gripped two daggers, a man crouched behind a shield larger than his torso, and a girl no older than fifteen, with a lightning sigil burned into her forearm, shook her cage door and shouted something the roar of the ship swallowed.

"Captured champions," Alexander said, and his voice changed. "My House collects them. I did not know it collected like this."

"Then you are not on the ship's side," Jace said from the floor.

"I am on the side of not being fed to my own vessel. That is a different thing."

A gold window opened over the cage bars, thin and shaking. Seraphina had forced the Free Accord open for six seconds, and she spent them like coins. "Map is on your wrist. The spine is sealed seven times, the first deck holds the champion forge, and the ship lands in twelve minutes on every person you have ever protected. Liam is already down there."

"Liam," Jace said into his collar.

"I have forty beasts falling out of the sky like hail with teeth," Liam answered, flat and loud over a roar of engines. "Mateo found a bus. I have eleven barricades, one bus, and no complaints. Go up, Jace. I will hold the ground."

The window folded shut.

Jace put his palm on the seventh seal of the spine, a slab of black iron the width of a building with a red lock burned into its face.

[ROOK BLADE SEAL: ACTIVATED]

[TARGET: BOUNDARY SEAL]

[COST: STAMINA. ALL OF IT]

The lock broke like a held breath let go. A path unspooled upward through the ship's heart, a spiral ramp a mile long, and Jace's knees folded like paper. Alexander caught him, slung one arm across his shoulders, and drew his own sword.

"Stand back from the cages," Alexander told the prisoners.

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He cut twenty-three seals in a single spinning sweep, a red wheel that rolled down the row of cells and left every door hanging open. The woman with the daggers came out first. The man behind the shield came out second and planted it in front of the girl with the lightning sigil, who wasted no time.

"You," the girl told Alexander, with sparks leaping between her fingers. "You are a Rook."

"I am a Rook with a sword and a bad week," Alexander said. "Climb."

The wolves arrived all at once. They came down the ramp in a gray wave, forty-one masks flashing in the red light, and Scarlett stepped to the front with her blade low. Her red edge lit like a coal in a forge. "Ember Rend," she said, and the whole ramp ahead of her split in a line of fire that cut ten wolves in half and sent the rest howling back up the spiral.

The bears came next. The girl with the lightning sigil lifted both hands and shouted, "Skybreaker Chain!" A rope of blue lightning thirty feet long wrapped three bears at once and rang their armor like a cathedral bell. The man with the shield took the next bear's anvil fists on his bulwark and roared "Ninefold Wall!" as nine layers of light locked in front of him and held, and the woman with the daggers danced across his shoulders in her Twin Moon Dance and opened the beast's throat plate in four bright flashes.

[PLATED BEARS: 6 OF 12 DEFEATED]

"Siege ram," Theodore Voss said calmly, dragging a wounded freed prisoner behind a pillar. "Large one. Do try to be decorative."

The ram was the size of a house and had a wrecking ball for a head. It dropped its skull and charged straight down the ramp at the people carrying Jace. Alexander swung his sword in a flat red arc. Scarlett flung hers like a spear. The two edges struck the ram's forehead from opposite sides at the same instant, and the beast exploded into a rain of rivets.

"Falling Verdict," Alexander said, breathing hard. "Sixth Edict."

"Ember Rend," Scarlett said. "Second form."

"We should fight on the same side more often."

"We should not," Scarlett said. "But it is working."

The remaining guards charged through the rain of burning metal. Thirty-one wolves filled the ramp from wall to wall, six plated bears climbed across the ceiling, and the final two siege rams lowered their wrecking-ball skulls.

The freed champions answered together.

Ninefold Wall became a shining bridge across the vertical shaft. Twin Moon Dance multiplied across it in silver afterimages. Skybreaker Chain struck the bridge, traveled through every shield layer, and erupted beneath the charging army as a blue lightning dragon.

Wolves burst apart by the dozen. The remaining bears fell from the ceiling wrapped in lightning. Both siege rams collided in midair, and Scarlett cut through their joined wrecking balls with one upward Ember Rend.

The explosion climbed three decks.

[FIRST DECK GUARD: ANNIHILATED]

[CHAMPION FORGE: 40 FEET AHEAD]

They found it at the top of the ramp, a seven-foot cylinder of white metal ringed with human-sized cradles and hooked by a hundred glowing cables to the ceiling. Every cable ran into a cage on the deck above. The forge forced every prisoner's body to regenerate, siphoned away every repaired point, and kept them alive so it could drain them again.

"My father said it was a myth," Alexander said, white around the mouth.

Jace could not walk. He fell into the nearest cradle.

[CHAMPION FORGE: SUBJECT DETECTED]

[REGENERATION INFUSION: ACTIVE]

[WARNING: STOLEN SOURCE]

[INFUSION WILL BECOME PERMANENT UPON INTEGRATION]

[SOURCE DAMAGE WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE FORGE IS DISCONNECTED]

[HEALTH: 12 -> 298]

[CHARGE: 1 -> 77]

It was like being filled with hot light. His ribs knit with a sound like knuckles cracking. The cuts across his arm sealed over, and the infusion mended everything except the six locked doors inside him. Then he felt the cost, a hundred strangers' pain pouring into him through the cables, and he understood what the forge had been doing to every cage above.

Jace grabbed the nearest cable with both hands and tore it out of the ceiling.

Sparks fell in a white waterfall. He tore out the next, and the next, until the whole bundle swung loose and the forge screamed, and Alexander's sword cut the last hundred in one stroke. The cradle snapped open. Jace stood up inside it, heavy with stolen light, and lifted the entire cylinder off its mount with a roar.

[CHAMPION FORGE: CAPTURED]

[EXTERNAL DRAINAGE NETWORK: DESTROYED]

[REGENERATION FUNCTION: PERMANENTLY DISABLED]

[FIRST RAID OBJECTIVE: SECURED]

[TRIAL GEAR CACHE: RECOVERED]

The cache hung behind the forge in a dozen open lockers: a reinforced Rook field coat, three medical syringes, and a pair of dark gauntlets stamped with a red crest. Jace pulled them on while the freed champions cheered.

[ROOK TRIAL GAUNTLETS: RARE, SHIPBOUND]

[TRIAL KNUCKLE: ONE BREAKER WAVE STORED]

[RECHARGE CONDITION: DEFEAT A ROOK TRIAL BOSS]

"I thought I would hate wearing Rook gear," Jace said.

"You look ridiculous," Alexander said.

"I feel amazing."

Seraphina's window flickered open one last time. "Eight minutes," she said. "Jace, the next deck is not a deck. It is an animal."

The ramp ended at a great iron door, and Jace put both gauntlets on it and pushed. The door swung open on a roaring dark. It did not lead into another physical deck. It opened into folded trial space, a captive iron world packed inside a vessel far too small to contain it. The floor tilted, the walls turned to ceilings, and gravity fell sideways, hurling every freed fighter against the nearest pillar. Beyond the doorway, a sky of chained iron stretched for miles, and something larger than Manhattan lifted its head out of it.

[NEXT DECK: GRAVITY TURNED SIDEWAYS]

[EXECUTION BEAST: AWAKE]

[SIZE: CITY]

Health: 298/420.

Charge: 77/140.