Chapter 390 — Death Against Wrath II

Chapter 390: Chapter 390 — Death Against Wrath II

It was a shorter window than the first. Ronan was only half up. Ciara was white in the face from the cost of those two planes. James went in anyway with Durendal and Finn at his shoulder, and Alice tangled up the wings above them. Mara went to fire again. Ren did not use his full draw. He had not had time to build it back, so he went in with a fast three-cut sequence, a lot less than the first. Cillian put down another burst.

The bar fell again.

And before James had even opened his mouth to call them out, he saw the crimson coming back. It was not like a coal now. It was rising steadily, much faster than after the first vent.

The rhythm was getting shorter. It was not going to stay comfortable.

"Out," he said.

Then he put Durendal away.

He reached back, and Azrael’s Broken Scythe came into his hands.

`[AUTHORITY RELEASE ACTIVATED]`

`[TARGET: AZRAEL’S BROKEN SCYTHE]`

`[DURATION: 30 MINUTES]`

Black ran along the broken blade, and the cold came up his arms the way it always did, through his wrists and into his elbows.

The Echo stopped.

It had been moving toward Finn. It stopped in the middle of a step, and its head came round, slowly, all the way, until it was looking at James.

"Death," it said.

That was all.

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** THE SCYTHE. HE’S PULLED THE SCYTHE

**[GalwayGoblin]:** it cut the red on 30. it CUT it

**[EagleEyeTX]:** "death"???? it called him DEATH

**[NotABot_Honest]:** lust and death. what is going on

**[sligo_sean]:** lads the angel is lust and james is death and i need to lie down

---

From then on, it wanted him, and that was not good news.

It came straight at him. James did not back off behind anyone. He met it.

The scythe met crimson. The red had come up over the Echo’s forearm like a gauntlet, ready for the blow. The blade went through it the way it had gone through the red on Floor 30. The red came apart along the line of the cut and did not close again.

The arm underneath was still there, still hard, and still coming. But where the blade had passed, the coating was gone.

He cut another line as it formed across the shoulder, turned the haft into the next punch, and was driven back four metres with his arms numb. There was too much body in it, far more than he had.

Finn came in on his left. He was not trying to take the fight. He was splitting its attention. Alice came down from above. Ronan, bleeding and moving anyway, got between the Echo and the open court so that it could not simply run James all the way across the arena.

The whole fight turned itself round James without anyone calling it.

Ciara stopped setting planes to protect people and started setting them to steer, bending each of the Echo’s charges back toward James. Mara went to ice again, freezing the ground on the lines Ciara made so that it skidded where it should have planted. Declan held his curses on, and James could see the strain in the way he stood. Darragh moved his mark off Ronan and onto James, because it was obvious now who was being hunted.

Ten people were not doing James’s job for him. They were buying him the seconds he needed to do the one thing nobody else on the floor could.

The Echo broke a plane and got to him anyway.

He caught the first strike on the haft and lost a metre. The second came across his chestplate and he felt Darragh’s mark take part of it, and the rest still went through.

`[HP: 758 / 2,048]`

He did not back out. He was inside its reach now, and he stayed there. The section of its arm that the scythe had stripped was right in front of him, raw and uncovered.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,580 / 3,100]`

He fired into the stripped section from half a metre. The red tried to flow back over the wound and could not get there in time. The blast went in where nothing was guarding it, and the Echo made its first sound that was not a word.

Its wings came round and hit him like a wave.

He went across the court, rolling. He hit stone, then more stone, and came to rest against the base of the far wall, in the rubble of a section that had come down long before any of them got there.

`[HP: 618 / 2,048]`

Alice was over him before the Echo could follow. They met in the air above him, and their wings slammed together. Black feathers came down round James like ash, and every exchange pushed a gust of air across the floor that he felt on his face.

She could hold it longer than any human here. But she was losing. He could see it in how far she gave ground on each exchange.

He made himself stop and look at his numbers.

He had 618 health and 2,580 mana. Authority Release had a long time left. Grave Step was close, but not ready. No Call of Souls. Nothing had died that counted.

The rubble beside his face was full of bones.

He put his hand on them.

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

`[MANA: 2,420 / 3,100]`

He sent one along the wall and one out across the court, round behind where the Echo was fighting Alice, until it stood thirty metres from him. That was inside Grave Step’s range, with room to spare.

Finn saw what they were for. He stopped trying to hit the Echo and started herding it, pushing on its flank with short chops, step by step, toward the far skeleton. Ciara saw it a second later and set a plane on the other side, to close the angle it would use to get away.

None of the three of them said a word. They didn’t need to.

The Echo went where they wanted it.

James waited, watching the cooldown run out.

It cleared.

`[GRAVE STEP — MANA COST: 120]`

`[MANA: 2,300 / 3,100]`

He came out of the fold behind the Echo, next to the skeleton, and the bad second hit him. Alice and Finn filled it. They kept it busy for exactly that long.

Then his balance came back, and he swung the scythe across the red that ran down the Echo’s back and into the roots of its wings.

The red tore open.

It was a bigger section than before, a whole lattice of crimson splitting across the back, and it did not reconnect.

The Echo turned on him, all of it at once. James knew from that alone that the cut mattered.

The crimson began to gather again for another vent. This time it came unevenly. It built up round the cut section and could not get through it.

James did not trust it.

"Away! Everyone off the front!"

He stayed. He stayed close enough to see what the broken channels did with it.

It went off.

Most of the red still went out in its branches. But the part of the network he had cut could not carry its share, and where it should have gone there was nothing. There was a narrow lane through the middle of the discharge, a gap two bodies wide where the red did not come.

He thought it wasn’t immunity. It was a route.

Ciara saw it a second after he did. Her last strong plane went up on the Echo’s far side to stop it twisting out of line with the gap. Ronan and Darragh held the front. Maeve was watching the last of the red on its skin go out, channel by channel.

"Empty!"

"Open!"

He was already inside it.

Ren drew. It was the full draw this time, everything he had built since the last window, and it went across the Echo’s back in a line of light. Mara gave up all her control and put everything into fire. Cillian’s Lightning Impact came down on it with a crack that shook the floor. Declan did not attack at all. He held every curse he had on it, so that it was slow at the one moment when slow mattered most. Finn came in with both axes. Alice came down from above.

James put the scythe into the broken lattice and the body under it.

The Echo tried to go up. Ciara’s plane was there, and it went sideways instead, still inside all of them.

It tried to break for Mara and Cillian. Ronan was there.

It turned to James.

That was what he wanted.

It hit him. Darragh’s mark took the front of it. James took the rest and stayed on his feet.

`[HP: 239 / 2,048]`

He hooked the broken scythe into the stripped section on its side. His instinct pulled it in close, the way he would have drawn something into Durendal’s reach, before he remembered he had no sword in his hand. So he used the scythe itself. He turned the hook, opened the wound wider, and the red round it could not close.

Finn’s axe was in its wing on the left. Alice had the other wing pinned from above. It could not turn away.

James drove Azrael through the middle of the broken crimson network and into the body.

The red tore apart round the blade like wet paper.

The bar went to nothing.

`[ECHO OF WRATH DEFEATED]` ℯℯ𝘭.

`[FLOOR 39 CLEARED]`

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** THEY DID IT

**[fianna_ffs]:** FIANNA AND ZERO. TEN OF THEM. TEN

**[EagleEyeTX]:** he’d have wanted this. thank you ireland

**[sligo_sean]:** LUST. AND. DEATH.

`[FLOOR EXIT — BROADCAST TERMINATED]`

The feed went dark for the whole world, on a victory.

---

Inside, nothing came.

No reward panel, and no EXP. The Waiting Room should have been folding round them by now.

James stood over what was left of the Echo. The body was coming apart into red threads and black feathers. He still had the scythe in his hands, and the cold in his arms, and the timer in the corner of his sight still counting.

`[AUTHORITY RELEASE — 00:19:42 REMAINING]`

Ronan was sitting on the stone with Maeve’s hands on him. Ciara was bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing as if she had run up a mountain. Mara’s staff was trembling in her grip. Declan sat down where he stood.

Then the System changed.

`[STORY CONDITION SATISFIED]`

`[STANDARD RETURN SUSPENDED]`

`[WAITING ROOM ACCESS DENIED]`

`[FLOOR 40 — STORY FLOOR]`

`[FORCED TRANSITION INITIATED]`

Nobody cheered.

James understood what it meant before anyone else had a chance to celebrate. There would be no recovery between floors. He had 239 health. Ronan was barely sitting up. Ciara had nothing left in her. The scythe’s timer would keep running into whatever came next.

Alice was not looking at the panels. She was looking at the centre of the court.

The red that had been the Echo was not fading the way red had faded on other floors. It was sinking. It ran down off the feathers and the threads into the channels in the stone and went into the floor, as if something under them was drinking it.

"Everyone to me," said James. "Now. Close in—"

The court was already coming apart.

The black walls went first, folding upward into nothing. The stone at the edge of the arena lifted and turned to light. Finn was running toward him with Ronan’s arm over his shoulder, and Ciara was pulling Mara by the wrist, and Alice’s wings came round James.

The arena went out from under all of them, and the Tower took all eleven of them onward without a Waiting Room or a single point restored.