A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 229: Chapter 229 — Floor 23? [BONUS]

James stayed.

He did not announce it. He was simply in the house at breakfast, and at lunch, and in the evenings, and after three days his mother stopped putting his portion aside as a question and started cooking for four people out of habit.

She also stopped looking at the front door every time his phone went off.

On the fourth day Finn messaged asking whether there was any news and whether James wanted to come out to the estate.

She’s stable. Home. Wings are a disaster but that’s mechanical.

Come to the house? Nothing heavy, just food

Not till the follow-up scan. If her temperature’s held by then, I’ll come out.

Finn sent back a single thumbs-up and did not ask again, which was Finn.

The follow-up came at the end of the week, and it was good as far as it went.

Nyra’s temperature had stayed inside its normal band since the night in the medical wing. The measurements had not moved since discharge, so whatever had been building had finished building. The mana readings had come down to a level the technician described as high but steady.

Nobody would say it would not happen again.

His mother came home with a monitoring kit in a hard case, a laminated sheet of instructions, and the same emergency number written on the front of it in marker — call it if Nyra faints, if she overheats, if the wings come out and she cannot put them away.

She put the case in the hall cupboard where she could reach it without turning a light on.

James found Nyra in the sitting room that evening and sat on the arm of the chair.

”There’s a meeting tomorrow at Finn’s,” he said. ”The five of us. We need to talk about the next floor.”

He did not say he was going back into the Tower, because he was not going back into the Tower tomorrow, and she had earned better than being scared for the wrong reason.

Nyra looked up at him and took her time about it.

”When would you be back?”

”Half seven. Before dinner.”

”Say it again.”

”Half seven.”

She held on to his sleeve for a second more, then let it go and picked her book back up.

He drove Finn’s estate car back through the Hale Estate gates the following afternoon, several days later than he had taken it, and dropped the keys on the strategy-room table before he sat down.

All four of them were already there.

Finn did not let him get properly into the chair.

”Is she all right?”

”She’s home. She’s stable.” James pulled the chair in. ”There’s a monitoring kit in our hall and a Bureau number on the fridge, but she’s home and she’s eating and she’s arguing about arithmetic.”

Some of the tension went out of the room.

”What actually happened?” Maeve asked.

”It was Nyra.”

Finn nodded, because Finn had known the name for months. Maeve’s expression shifted into recognition and then into concern, because she knew there was a child in James’s house even if she had never been introduced to her.

Ronan and Cillian looked at each other.

”Right,” Cillian said. ”I’ll be the one who says it. Who’s Nyra?”

Finn looked at James first, waiting.

James thought about it for about two seconds. Ronan and Cillian had bled beside him for nineteen floors, and one of them had held a gap alone against orcs to keep Maeve breathing, and there was no version of the next five floors where the basic truth stayed useful as a secret.

He nodded.

”Floor reward,” Finn said. ”Mythic. James got an egg.”

”An egg,” Ronan repeated.

”An egg. He carried it in his inventory for floors and it sat there soaking up mana, and it hatched on Floor 10, in the middle of the boss room, about four seconds before the Abyssal Venom Python finished killing him. He was on one HP.”

Cillian had gone very still.

”It didn’t hatch into a dragon,” Finn said. ”It hatched into a small girl with black wings and a horn. She landed on him. She called him Daddy.” He paused. ”Then she used some mythic ability none of us have ever seen since and killed the boss, and everybody in that room who was still alive walked out because of her.”

Nobody said anything.

Finn let it sit for a moment.

”Creepy, right?”

Cillian stared at him. ”Creepy is doing a heroic amount of work in that sentence.”

”Are you serious?” Ronan said. ”Finn. Straight answer.”

”I was about four metres away, and I’ve spent months wishing there was a less strange version to tell people.”

”She’s a child,” James said.

He said it evenly, and it stopped the room, because they had all been about three sentences from discussing her the way they discussed drop rates.

”The egg is where she came from. It isn’t what she is. She’s eight or nine as far as anyone can tell, she lives with my mother, she does lessons at our kitchen table and she loses her temper at long division. That’s the part that matters.”

”Understood,” Ronan said, and meant it.

”Does she know?” Maeve asked. ”Where she came from.”

”She knows she hatched, and she knows I found her on a floor. She’s asked me twice.” James turned his glass on the table. ”What she doesn’t know is what made the egg, or why it came to me, or what any of that means. Neither do I, so at least we’re honest with each other.”

He gave them the rest without walking them through the corridor again.

Nyra had collapsed in the sitting room. Her body had put out enough heat that his mother could not keep a hand on her. She had grown — four centimetres of height, more mass, a wider wingspan, a longer horn — in about five hours, and when she woke up her concealment had stopped working properly and still only worked in pieces. The doctors believed it was a growth event driven by her own mana rather than an illness. Nobody could tell him why it had started now, and nobody would promise it would not happen again.

Ronan’s first question was the one James had expected from him.

”Are the two of them secure? And I don’t mean the door. Does the Bureau medical team have standing access to that house, or does your mother have to ring a number and wait?”

”She has a number that bypasses the queue, and a detail already on the street. Immediate situation’s covered.”

”And when it isn’t?” Ronan said. ”The Bureau protects them because you’re the most valuable Challenger in the country. That’s a reason, not a promise. If that ever changes, or if there’s a case they won’t touch, Guild Zero needs its own secure medical capability — for families, and for anyone who isn’t standard human.”

”Noted,” James said. ”Not tonight, but noted, and you’re right.”

Cillian had been leaning back with his hands laced behind his head, working through it.

”So the Tower gave you a daughter as loot,” he said. ”She saved the team. And now she’s evolving in Dublin.”

”That’s the uncomplicated version,” Finn said.

Maeve had not joined any of it. She had been watching James since he sat down.

”Are you actually ready for this,” she said, ”or are you here because you think we’ve waited long enough?”

”She’s home, her temperature’s held for a week, and my mother has a doctor on speed dial who knows what she is.” James met her eyes. ”If any one of those three things weren’t true, I’d be in Ballymun and you’d be doing this without me.”

Maeve nodded once and let it go.

Finn got up and went to the console at the end of the table.

”Fair warning,” he said. ”This is going to be thinner than any of you want.”

He had spent his own week trying to rebuild what the Tower had shown them for ninety seconds in his basement, and what he had was three markers in roughly the right relationship to each other, a set of roads Raymond’s companies had appeared to be strung along, and a note that the westernmost settlement had been the one to turn red first.

James looked at it and catalogued the holes.

No names for any of the three places. No idea how many people lived in them. Nothing about walls, garrisons, or whether any of them had a garrison at all. No enemy types, no numbers, no direction of approach. No distances, and no travel times, which on the last floor had been the difference between clearing it and losing it.

One fact, and only one, had come through that map intact: Raymond could not reach all three, and somebody was going to be told no.

Finn reached the console and looked round the table until he had all four of them.

”All right,” he said. ”Now let get ready for Floor Twenty-Three.”