Chapter 153: The Ascent Line

The staircase from the moon was not a staircase. It was a railway, and something with a thousand legs was coming down it.

Jace saw the headlight first, a white star sliding down the beam of light that connected the Atlantic to the sky. Then he saw the body behind it. Steel carriages linked by red-glowing joints, each carriage the size of a city block, each one walking on forty iron legs that clanged against the light like hammers on an anvil. It did not end. It ran up through the clouds and kept going until it vanished into the moon's glare.

[HIGHER ROOK TOWER: FLOOR 1]

[THE ASCENT LINE]

[CLEAR CONDITION: REACH THE FLOOR 1 PLATFORM]

[FLOOR GUARDIAN: RAIL LEVIATHAN]

[LEVEL: 1,100]

[WARNING: GUARDIAN LEVEL EXCEEDS USER LEVEL]

[PARTY LIMIT: 12]

Jace read the warning twice and felt himself start to grin.

[HEALTH: 369/520. CHARGE: 113/220. CORRUPTION: 89%]

[PRECISION CONTROL: RESTORED]

[SIX SEALED COMBAT SKILLS: REMAIN SEALED]

"That is the weakest guardian in the tower," said the woman who had been Hour Twelve. Her name was Selene Hart, and she still carried the noon-sun sword, though the clock on her chest had stopped for good. "There are a hundred floors. Each guardian is stronger than the last. The Authority calls this one the tutorial."

"The tutorial is longer than New Jersey," Scarlett said.

"Yes."

Jace picked the party in four seconds. Alexander, Scarlett, Caleb, Penelope, Selene, the girl with the lightning sigil, the shield man, the woman with the twin daggers, the woman with the twin hammers, the ice-wolf tamer, and the knight in burning armor. Eleven. With him, twelve.

[PARTY: 12 / 12]

Liam stayed on the shore with the rest of the champions. Emma stayed with the wounded. Mateo's voice came through Jace's collar from somewhere near the base of the beam.

"I found the rail current," Mateo said. "It runs straight up the light. Forty thousand volts and climbing. I can hook my cranes into it."

"Then hook in. Wait for my call."

The Rail Leviathan reached the bottom of the stair, curled its headlight toward the party, and screamed with the sound of every train brake in the world.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

They jumped.

Jace landed on the third carriage. The roof bucked under him. The Leviathan reversed in one motion and raced back up the beam, carrying the party with it at a speed that tore the clouds open. The Atlantic dropped away. Manhattan shrank to a coin.

Forty iron legs lashed back over the roof. Jace ducked one and the next took him across the ribs.

[HEALTH: 369 -> 352]

He reached for the place inside his chest where Arena Breaker had burned.

[ARENA BREAKER: CONDITIONS NOT MET]

[REQUIREMENT: AN ARENA TO BREAK]

"Of course," Jace said.

He looked down at the joint between carriages. A red seal held it together, a disc of Rook command the size of a manhole cover. He looked down the length of the Leviathan. A hundred joints. A hundred seals.

"Selene. Is every carriage held by one of these?"

"Every one. The Authority binds its guardians."

Jace slapped his palm against the first seal.

[ROOK BLADE SEAL: ACTIVATED]

[TARGET: BOUND SEAL]

[SEAL POWER: BELOW BLADE SEAL LIMIT]

[COST: STAMINA]

The seal split. The carriage behind it shuddered and dragged. Jace ran to the next one.

"He is going to cut all hundred," Alexander said.

"He is going to die cutting all hundred," Scarlett said, and stepped in front of the legs coming for him.

They fought down the spine in a moving wall. The shield man held Ninefold Wall over Jace's back. The lightning girl threw Skybreaker Chain between the legs and fried them at the joints. The twin hammers smashed carriages flat. The burning knight set the roof on fire and the ice-wolves put it out again. Caleb walked backward behind them with his paint, marking every cut seal in red so Jace never cut the same one twice.

Twenty seals. Forty. Jace's arms began to shake.

The Leviathan felt it. Its headlight swung back toward the party, and a red window opened above the moon.

[RAIL LEVIATHAN: LIMITER RELEASED]

[SECOND CARRIAGE FORM]

[LEVEL: 1,100 -> 1,350]

The carriages grew teeth. Every leg sprouted a blade. The Leviathan's speed doubled, and the sky turned from blue to black. The air vanished from Jace's lungs as they crossed the edge of space.

[ATMOSPHERE: ZERO]

[HEALTH: 352 -> 338]

His vision went gray. His blood roared. Caleb dropped to his knees on the carriage roof and slammed a stake through the steel.

"Boundary," he gasped, with the last of his breath. "The air stays."

A red circle spread out across the roof. Inside it, the air came back like a slap. The party breathed. Outside it, the vacuum burned black and silent.

"Hold that line!" Jace shouted.

"I am holding it," Caleb said. "Cut faster."

Alexander raised his blade. Something in his face changed, the look of a man reaching for a door he had always been afraid to open.

"Falling Verdict," he said. "Eighth Edict."

No one had ever seen the eighth. The cut left his sword as a red line that ran the full length of the Leviathan, and every leg on its left side fell off at once.

"Ember Rend," Scarlett said, and her blade turned white. "Fourth Form. Meridian."

Her cut took the right side.

Selene drew the noon sun. "Noon Edge," she said, and the headlight exploded.

The Leviathan stumbled on the light with no legs, no eyes, and sixty seals left. Jace's legs had stopped working properly. He crawled to the next joint anyway.

Sixty. Eighty. Ninety-nine.

He hit the last seal and felt his stamina fall to nothing.

[STAMINA: SEVERELY DEPLETED]

[RAIL LEVIATHAN: ALL JOINT SEALS CUT]

[RAIL LEVIATHAN: STRUCTURE HELD BY ROUTE ALONE]

"Mateo," Jace said. "Now."

Far below, six crane trucks dropped their cables into the base of the beam. Forty thousand volts of rail current came screaming up the light, and Jace raised one shaking hand and pointed the stabilized pulse at the line itself.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: SURGICAL APPLICATION]

[TARGET: ASCENT LINE CURRENT]

[ROUTE: RAIL -> CUT JOINTS]

[TARGET SIZE: 100 JOINTS]

[CHARGE COST: 3]

[CHARGE: 113 -> 110]

The pulse diverted the climbing current into the Leviathan's tail. It entered the first cut seal and jumped through every severed joint. The first carriage exploded. Then the second. A chain of explosions raced along the Leviathan's spine, each one larger than the last, until a hundred white suns burned in a line between the sea and space.

Jace threw the Gravity Chain around the beam, tore Caleb's boundary-marked roof plate free, and wrapped the plate and his party into the slack.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 110 -> 105]

The Leviathan came apart beneath them. Carriage after carriage peeled off the light and fell back toward Earth, burning across the sky like a meteor storm that the whole East Coast could see. The last shockwave cracked the chain against Jace's ribs.

[HEALTH: 338 -> 330]

[FLOOR GUARDIAN: DEFEATED]

The chain held. The party hung from the staircase of light, five hundred miles above the Atlantic, while the last carriage hit the sea.

Something landed in Jace's open hand. It was warm, the size of a fist, and it beat like an engine.

[RAILHEART RELIC: ACQUIRED]

[STORES RAIL CURRENT. RIDES ANY LINE THE HOLDER CAN REACH]

[TEAM-COMBINATION PROFICIENCY: INCREASED]

[FIELD RECOVERY REQUIRED]

The stair above them unrolled into a platform of white stone. A gate stood at the far end. Behind it, the remaining ninety-nine floors climbed into the dark, and at the very top, something opened its eyes.

Jace pulled the boundary-marked plate onto the white stone. The twelve party members crossed onto the platform together.

[FLOOR 1 PLATFORM: REACHED]

[FLOOR 1: CLEARED]

[FLOOR 1 CLEARED IN RECORD TIME]

[FLOOR 100 HAS TAKEN NOTICE]

"Glitch King," said a voice from above the moon. "Come up."

Health: 330/520.

Charge: 105/220.