Chapter 398 — The Second Anathema II

Chapter 398: Chapter 398 — The Second Anathema II

Maeve was kneeling beside Ronan.

She had already checked him. James could see that she had, and that she had known before she checked. She had closed his eyes and had not moved him. The ruined shield lay on the stone a little way off where it had fallen when the straps finally gave.

Finn walked over and picked it up.

He stood holding it with the split face toward him, and did not put it down or hold it out to anybody. He just stood there with it, as if he had picked it up to do something and then could not remember what.

James stood over Ronan.

From there he could see the others properly for the first time. Darragh lay near the line where he had stepped in front of Ciara. Mara lay where the red had reached her, beside the ice wall she had not finished. Ren lay with the katana close beside his hand, back in its scabbard.

Behind him he had just added one of the Seven to his army.

In front of him lay the four people who had helped him earn it. He could not bring any of them back the same way.

The thought came anyway.

*Ronan.*

*Reanimate.*

He let it come all the way and looked straight at it.

Turiel had come with a claim from Death that made him whole. Ronan had nothing like that. James knew what ordinary Reanimate did. It kept the instincts and the body. It made something that would stand in front of him and take hits for him and never complain. He had no evidence at all that it would bring back the man who had stood behind the shield. It would bring back the shape of him, standing where he always stood.

He was not going to turn grief into an experiment, and he was not going to do that to Ronan.

He closed the skill without casting it.

---

The rewards came while they were dealing with the dead.

`[FLOOR 39 — ECHO OF WRATH SLAIN]`

`[EXP GAINED: 24,000]`

`[FLOOR 39 CLEAR REWARD]`

`[EXPERIENCE AWARDED: 12,000]`

`[HEAVY DEMONS SLAIN ×2]`

`[LEAN DEMONS SLAIN ×10]`

`[EXP GAINED: 6,000]`

`[TURIEL — FALLEN ANGEL OF WRATH — SLAIN]`

`[EXP GAINED: 120,000]`

`[FLOOR 40 STORY CLEAR REWARD]`

`[EXPERIENCE AWARDED: 40,000]`

`[WORLD-FIRST BONUS — FLOOR 40]`

`[EXPERIENCE AWARDED: 50,000]`

`[TOWER CREDITS AWARDED: 150,000 PER SURVIVING MEMBER]`

`[UNIQUE ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: THE FIRST OF SEVEN]`

`[CONDITION: SLAY ONE OF THE SEVEN]`

`[EXPERIENCE AWARDED: 48,000]`

`[AZRAEL’S BROKEN SCYTHE — AUTHORITY COMPATIBILITY INCREASED]`

`[REASON: FIRST DISCIPLE SLAIN AND CLAIMED THROUGH DEATH AUTHORITY]`

`[LEVEL UP ×4]`

`[LEVEL: 47 → 51]`

`[EXP: 79,785 / 84,000 → 25,785 / 96,000]`

`[ALL STATS +4]`

`[FREE STAT POINTS GAINED: 20]`

Heat went up his spine four times in a row. Beside him, Finn’s shoulders went back as his own levels landed, and further off Cillian swore quietly at whatever his number was.

The allocation screen opened. Thirty-five points sat blinking over his stat block.

He closed it, and then he closed the rest. He could read the titles and the gains and the exact numbers later, in a chair, with tea.

Ronan would not still be lying beside him later.

---

Ciara and Declan went to their own.

Ciara took Ren’s katana up off the floor herself, scabbard and all, and held it for a moment before she slung it across her back. She took Mara’s staff from where it had rolled against the ice and gave it to Declan without a word, and Declan took it in both hands. Then she went to Darragh.

She did not ask anybody for help, and she could not lift him on her own. He was a big man in heavy armour.

Finn put the shield down then. He set it very carefully against the nearest column. Then he went across without asking and got his arms under Darragh’s shoulders. Ciara looked up at him. For a moment James thought she would tell him to leave it.

She let him.

James and Cillian took Ronan. Cillian took his feet and James took his shoulders, and the weight of him was the worst thing James had ever carried.

Maeve did not carry. She walked beside them, close, and her eyes kept going to the living, to Finn’s ribs, to Cillian’s hands, to Declan, checking all of them by habit, though the System had already put them right.

Alice stood between Turiel and everyone else.

The contract made it unnecessary, and she had to know it did. She stood there anyway, a little in front of him, with her wings half open, and she did not take her eyes off him once.

James noticed. It told him exactly how far she trusted the one thing on the floor who had come from the same place she had.

Turiel stayed where he had been told to stay. He watched them gather the people he had killed.

He did not apologise. He was nowhere near that, and James did not expect him ever to be.

But he watched. James felt it on the back of his neck the whole time he was carrying Ronan across the floor. Turiel watched the bearer of Death carry one dead mortal carefully, with his jaw locked, when he had just bound one of the Seven to his will and had not even looked back at the prize.

Turiel did not understand it. James could feel him not understanding it.

---

`[RETURN TO EARTH IN 60 SECONDS]`

They spent it the way people did after a floor like this one.

They laid the four of them side by side in the middle of the floor. Ciara straightened Darragh’s arms. Declan set Mara’s staff along her side, then took it back, then set it down again. Finn brought Ronan’s shield and laid it on his chest, with the split face down, the way Maeve had once laid another shield on another man on another floor. Cillian walked the edges of the hall once, checking the shadows behind the fallen columns, because you always checked.

James thought about dismissing Turiel into contract space.

He decided against it. He was not putting something that had killed four people in the last hour somewhere he could not see it.

`[RETURN TO EARTH IN 10 SECONDS]`

The hall had begun coming apart around them. The far walls folded up into the dark, and the platform went to light.

There were six living Challengers and four dead ones, and behind James stood two Fallen Angels.

`[3]`

`[2]`

`[1]`

---

In the sealed recovery chamber under the Dublin Tower, they already knew.

The worldwide announcement had reached Earth before the team did. It came the way it came everywhere, as a chime and a panel nobody could close. *One of the Seven has fallen.* Somebody started cheering, and then several people did.

O’Shea let it run for about two seconds.

"They’re not back," he said.

He did not raise his voice. He had said it once before, on the night of another world-first, and the room had learned what it meant. A clear notification told you the floor was beaten. It did not tell you by how many.

Ten Challengers had gone through that gate, and ten recovery positions were made up along the wall. The medics stood at them with their hands on the rails.

The gate went white.

When the light cleared, the first thing anyone saw was the count.

James stood there, and Finn, and Maeve. Cillian. Ciara. Declan.

That was six standing.

Then the four laid carefully on the platform among them. Ronan. Darragh. Mara. Ren.

The room died without anybody saying anything.

A medic who had been moving toward Finn stopped, because Finn was whole and standing, and the man at his feet with a shield on his chest was not. She turned her stretcher round and pushed it toward the dead. Down the row, the others did the same. Somebody at the back had been counting under their breath and stopped at six. Over by the door, two Fianna staff recognised the green on Darragh’s armour and the staff along Mara’s side before they could properly see the faces, and one of them put a hand over her mouth.

Then a technician on the edge of the chamber said, "Wait."

She said it quietly. She was looking past the six, at the back of the platform.

The count was still wrong.

Alice stood behind James, which they knew about. They had all seen her before.

Beside her stood something none of them had ever seen. It had black wings, and they were scarred and burned at the edges. Behind its head hung the broken pieces of a halo with dim gold in them, and red ran under its skin bound in black.

Turiel opened his wings far enough to clear the last of the transport light.

The recovery room froze.

James was still holding Ronan’s shoulders. He felt the silence change and looked up, and every person in the room was looking past him.

O’Shea had come forward through the medics. He stopped.

He was looking at the face, the same face the whole world had watched die on its interface ten minutes ago.

James watched him understand it before anyone had said a word.

Guild Zero had gone into Floor 40 with one Fallen Angel, and it had come back with two.