The portcullis came down behind him with a crash like the end of the world.
Percy didn't look back. He'd known it would. No retreat. That was what Gate Floors meant.
He was standing at the edge of a battlefield.
It was green and wide and rolling, under a high blue sky full of fat white clouds. It smelled like crushed grass and horses and woodsmoke. Banners snapped in the wind. Red and gold, a dragon on every one. Far across the field, on a gentle hill, rose a castle of white stone, with a dozen towers and a hundred windows glittering in the sun. It was the kind of castle he'd seen in picture books when he was little. In both his lives.
And between him and the castle, ranked across the field in perfect lines, stood an army of knights.
There were hundreds of them. Steel armor polished to mirror brightness. Long shields painted with lions and eagles and crosses and stars. Lances raised like a forest of iron trees. Their horses stamped and snorted in the grass.
They were all looking at him.
[FLOOR 10: GATE FLOOR — THE CAMELOT TRIAL]
[Rank: E+ (Gate)]
[Enemies: Lv 55–65]
[Mini-Boss: Lv 67]
[Final Boss: Lv 70]
[This trial measures skill, honor, and the heart of the challenger.]
[MAIN QUEST: Prove yourself before the King.]
[SIDE QUEST: Twelve Duels. Defeat the twelve Knights of the Round Table, one after another, without healing between them.]
[HIDDEN QUEST: ???]
A single rider came out from the lines.
He was an old knight, gray-bearded and straight-backed, on a gray horse. He wore no helmet, and he carried no lance. Only a white staff with a ribbon tied to it. He rode across the grass at an easy walk and stopped a few yards from Percy, and looked down at him with calm brown eyes.
"You are the challenger," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I guess so," Percy said.
The old knight looked him over. The filthy jacket. The frost burns. The cheap, notched bronze sword. The kid with dark circles under his eyes so deep they looked like bruises.
"You are very young," he observed.
"I get that a lot too."
Something that might have been a smile moved in the gray beard.
"I am Sir Ector," said the old knight. "Herald of this field. Foster father of the King." He lifted his staff, and the ribbon snapped in the wind. "Hear the terms of the trial, challenger. You will cross this field. You will come to the castle. In the hall of the Round Table, twelve knights will meet you, one by one. If you stand when the last of them has fallen, you will face the King's youth. If you stand after that, you will face the King." He paused. "No man has stood before the King and been found wanting, and lived to tell of it."
"What happens if I'm found worthy?"
Sir Ector looked at him for a long moment.
"No man," he said quietly, "has ever been found worthy at all."
He wheeled his horse, and rode back toward the lines.
And the army of Camelot lowered its lances, and charged.
The first day was the field.
Percy didn't remember most of it afterward. It came back to him later in pieces, like a dream. The thunder of hooves, so loud it shook the ground under his sneakers. A lance tip the size of his head coming straight at his face, and the crack of his own lightning splitting it to splinters. Fang and Asterion howling and bellowing through the ranks of horses. Rime, the shadow dragon, sweeping low over the field with its frost-breath, freezing the grass so the warhorses skidded and fell. The weight of armored men crashing into him. The ring of his bronze sword on steel, again and again and again, until his arm went numb to the shoulder.
The Knights of Camelot were Level 55 to 60. He was Level 60. And there were hundreds of them.
But they fought fair.
That was the thing that struck him, even through the exhaustion and the fog. They fought fair. They never came at him two at a time when one would do. When he fell, they waited for him to get up. When he knocked one down, the knight would raise a gauntleted hand in salute before he faded back into gold thread. It was the strangest battle he'd ever been in. Like fighting an army of gentlemen.
It's testing honor, he thought, somewhere around the middle of the afternoon, wiping blood out of his eyes. It's watching what I do.
So he fought fair too.
He didn't Shadow Step behind anyone. He didn't send his shadows to drag men down from behind. When a young knight's horse threw him and he lay stunned in the grass with his helmet knocked off, Percy stood over him with his sword raised for a long second. Then he lowered it, and offered the boy his hand. The young knight stared at him. Then he took Percy's hand, and stood, and bowed, and walked off the field of his own accord.
[HONOR +1.]
He didn't know there was an Honor stat. He decided not to ask.
By sunset, he'd reached the castle gate. He had lost count of the knights he'd beaten. He was down to less than half his HP and nearly empty of MP. And his whole body was one long throbbing bruise.
[Level 60 → Level 62]
The gate of Camelot stood open. Inside, a long stone corridor led to a pair of enormous oak doors.
And beyond them, he knew, was the Round Table.
Twelve duels, he thought. No healing.
He sat down on the stone step outside the doors, with his back against the castle wall. He let himself rest for exactly one hour, by Great Sage's count. Rest wasn't healing. His HP didn't move. But his breath came back, and his arms stopped shaking.
Then he got up and pushed the doors open.
The hall of the Round Table was the most beautiful room he'd ever seen.
It was huge and high-vaulted, with walls hung with tapestries of hunts and battles and quests. Tall windows let in the red-gold light of the setting sun. In the middle of the floor stood the Table itself. It was an enormous ring of dark polished oak, so big that a dozen men could have lain end to end across it. Around its edge were chairs. Dozens of them. Every one carved with a name.
Twelve of the chairs were occupied.
Twelve knights rose to their feet as he came in. Twelve faces turned toward him. Old faces and young ones, scarred and handsome and plain and proud.
[SIDE QUEST ACTIVE: TWELVE DUELS.]
[Healing items and skills are sealed until the twelfth duel is decided.]
[HP: 612 / 1,520]
Six hundred, Percy thought. Six hundred HP for twelve knights.
Okay.
The first knight stepped forward.
Sir Kay was loud and sarcastic and quick with his tongue, and slower with his sword. He mocked Percy for his sneakers, his hair, his height, and his "pathetic little butter knife." Percy let him talk. Kay was so busy talking that he didn't see Percy's feet move. Percy hooked his ankle and put him on the floor in under a minute.
[HP: 612 → 571]
Sir Gareth was young and earnest and fought like a kitchen boy who'd taught himself, because he had. Percy liked him. It took a long time, and cost him a cut across the forearm, before Gareth's sword went spinning away.
[HP: 571 → 498]
Sir Bors fought like a wall. Sir Lamorak fought like a storm. Sir Gaheris fought with two swords, one in each hand, and nearly took Percy's ear off. Sir Bedivere had only one hand and fought better with it than most men did with two. When Percy finally beat him, the one-handed knight laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.
[HP: 498 → 402]
[HP: 402 → 340]
[HP: 340 → 296]
Sir Gawain was the seventh. He was huge and red-bearded, with a golden sun painted on his shield. And as the fight went on, he got stronger. Percy didn't understand it at first. Then he noticed the light. The sun was setting outside the windows, and the hall was darkening. But a single shaft of gold light still fell across the floor of the hall, right where Gawain was standing. And the giant knight was keeping himself in it, very carefully, like a cat in a warm patch on the carpet.
His strength comes from the sun, Percy remembered, from a book a long time ago. It grows until noon. And fades after.
He stopped attacking. He started circling. Slowly, patiently, step by step, he drew the big knight out of the shaft of light. Into the shadows.
And in the shadows, Gawain was just a man.
[HP: 296 → 241]
The eighth knight was the one that nearly broke him.
It wasn't because he was strong. Sir Percival was the least dangerous fighter of the twelve. He was tall and gangly, with a farm boy's freckled face and big, clumsy hands. He swung his sword like a woodsman swinging an axe. It was because of what he said.
They'd been fighting for a few minutes, steel ringing in the dim hall, when Percival suddenly lowered his blade and looked at him.
"You are carrying something," he said. "Aren't you?"
Percy, breathing hard, didn't answer.
"I know the look," Percival said gently. "I grew up in a forest, alone with my mother. I did not know what a knight was. I did not know my own name. And then I came here, a fool among great men, and I sat at this table, and I went looking for the Grail. And I found it." He tilted his head. "Do you know what the Grail asks, when you find it?"
Percy shook his head.
"It asks, Whom does it serve?" Percival smiled. "Not, What does it give you? Not, What do you want?Whom does it serve. Most knights never think to answer. They are too busy wanting." He raised his sword again. "So. Little brother with my name. Whom do you serve?"
Percy stood there in the dim light, with his arms shaking and blood running down his wrist, and thought about it.
About his mother, in a world that didn't exist anymore. About Nico and Bianca, waiting in the Lotus. About Rachel and Nancy and Matt, tearing open envelopes in Manhattan. About Ezra, crying on a beach. About forty kids in Cabin Eleven, sleeping on the floor because nobody had ever claimed them.
"The ones nobody else does," he said.
Percival looked at him for a long moment. Then he lowered his sword, stepped back, and knelt on one knee.
"Then I yield," said Sir Percival, "to a better answer than mine."
[Sir Percival has yielded.]
[HONOR +2.]
The ninth, tenth and eleventh duels were a blur. Sir Tristan with his long, flashing sword, who fought like a musician playing a harp. Sir Lucan the Butler. Sir Galahad, cold and pure and perfect, who never made a single mistake. Percy beat him anyway, barely, by making so many mistakes of his own that Galahad couldn't predict any of them.
[HP: 241 → 188]
[HP: 188 → 131]
[HP: 131 → 82]
Eighty-two HP.
He could barely stand. His sword arm hung like a dead thing. His vision was swimming at the edges. And the twelfth knight was rising from his chair.
He was tall and dark-haired and impossibly handsome, with sad dark eyes and a long, plain sword. When he drew it, the whole hall seemed to go quiet. It wasn't a showy sword. It didn't glow. But it moved like it was part of his arm.
[SIR LANCELOT DU LAC]
[Level: 65]
[The greatest knight of the Round Table.]
Of course, Percy thought, swaying on his feet. Of course it's him last.
Lancelot looked at him with those sad dark eyes.
"You may rest," he said quietly. "If you wish. I will wait."
"Rest won't heal me," Percy said. "Not in here."
"No," Lancelot agreed. "But you would die rested, which is something."
Percy laughed. It hurt. "No, thanks. Let's go."
He lost the first exchange. And the second. And the third.
Lancelot was better than him. Not a little better. A lot better. Better than Luke. Better than anyone Percy had ever crossed swords with in either life, except maybe Kronos at the very end. Every attack Percy made, Lancelot had already answered before he finished making it. Every guard Percy raised, Lancelot was already past.
[HP: 82 → 61]
[HP: 61 → 34]
He tried the disarm. Luke's move. The one that had beaten the Doppelganger. Lancelot turned it aside like he'd seen it a thousand times, which he probably had.
[HP: 34 → 19]
Percy went down on one knee.
The sword hung in front of his face, its point an inch from his throat. Lancelot stood over him, not even breathing hard.
"Yield," the greatest knight said softly. "There is no shame in it. Not to me."
Percy looked up at him.
And he thought: Shadows.
They were right there. He could feel them, coiled and waiting in the dark beneath him. Rime. Asterion. Chi-Chi. All nine of them. If he let them out now, they'd swarm Lancelot from behind before the knight even knew they were there. It would be over in a second. He'd win the duel. He'd finish the side quest.
And it would be a lie.
He'd fought this whole floor fair. Every knight, every duel. If he called the shadows now, from behind, in a one-on-one fight with a man who'd just offered to let him rest... It would mean none of the rest of it had been real.
He let go of the shadows.
"No," he said.
And he did the only thing he had left.
He dropped his sword.
Lancelot's eyes flickered, just for an instant. Surprised. And in that instant, Percy came up off his knee, inside the knight's guard, past the point of the long sword where a blade can't reach. He grabbed Lancelot's sword arm with both hands, and put his hip into the knight's, and threw him.
Monk. Not the Monk class. The real thing. Hand to hand, the way Clarisse had taught him in another life, rolling in the dirt behind the Ares cabin, because she said a sword was just a stick and what mattered was who was holding it.
The greatest knight of the Round Table flew over Percy's shoulder and hit the stone floor of his own hall, flat on his back, with a crash that echoed off the rafters.
Percy landed on top of him with a knee on his chest. He'd pulled Lancelot's own dagger from its sheath at the knight's belt, and he held it at the knight's throat.
For a long moment, there was no sound in the hall at all.
Then Lancelot began to laugh.
It was a quiet laugh, and a sad one, and it shook his whole body. He lay on the stone with a filthy fourteen-year-old kneeling on his chest, and laughed until there were tears in his dark eyes.
"Dropped your sword," he said. "To win. Gods above. I have not been bested like that since I was a boy."
He lifted one hand from the floor, palm up.
"I yield," said Sir Lancelot du Lac.
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: TWELVE DUELS]
[The Host has defeated the twelve Knights of the Round Table without healing.]
[+60,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 62 → Level 64]
[HONOR +3.]
[Healing unsealed.]
[HP: 19 / 1,560]
Percy rolled off the knight's chest and lay on his back on the cold stone floor of the hall of the Round Table. He looked up at the rafters, and the tapestries, and the last red light of the sun dying in the windows.
And he passed out.
He woke up to the smell of bread.
Somebody had put a folded cloak under his head, and another one over him. The hall was dark except for a fire burning low in a great stone hearth. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him, tearing a round loaf into pieces with his big farm-boy hands, was Sir Percival.
"Eat," the knight said, and handed him a piece. "Then drink this. It is from the Lady of the Lake. It will not make you whole, but it will make you less broken."
It was a small glass vial, full of something that glowed faintly silver, like moonlight on water. Percy drank it.
[Item consumed: Lake-Water Draught.]
[HP: 19 → 1,180 / 1,560]
[MP: 40 → 300 / 440]
He ate the bread. It was the best bread he had ever tasted in his life, and he cried a little while he ate it. He was too tired to be embarrassed. Percival didn't say anything. He just tore off another piece and handed it over.
And somewhere in the middle of the second piece, something happened.
The fog lifted.
It went all at once, like a window being thrown open in a stuffy room. One second his head was full of wet gray cotton, the way it had been since Denver. The next it was clear and cold and sharp. Every thought came quick and clean.
[THREAD-WORN (Compounded) has expired.]
[INT and WIS restored.]
[Great Sage notes: This restoration is temporary. On exiting the Loom, the condition will return at greater severity.]
I know, Percy thought. But I've got it now.
He sat up. He looked around the dark hall, at the empty chairs around the Round Table, and the cloaks the knights had left over him, and the firelight. And for the first time since he'd walked onto this floor, he understood what it was.
It wasn't a dungeon. It wasn't a fight.
It was an interview.
The King's youth was waiting for him in the courtyard at dawn.
He was a boy. That was the first surprise. Fifteen, maybe. Skinny and sandy-haired and a little awkward, in a plain brown tunic, with a squire's sword on his hip that was too big for him. He was standing next to a big gray stone in the middle of the yard. Sticking out of the stone, up to its crossguard, was a sword.
It was glowing.
[MINI-BOSS: PRINCE ARTHUR, THE KING'S YOUTH]
[Level: 67]
[Phase 1: Squire.]
"You beat Sir Lancelot," the boy said, staring at him. "By dropping your sword. Everyone's talking about it. Sir Kay's furious." He grinned, suddenly and shyly. "I think it's wonderful."
"Thanks," Percy said.
"I'm supposed to fight you now." Young Arthur drew his too-big sword with both hands. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good yet."
He was lying. He was very good.
He was quick and light on his feet, and he fought like Percy had fought at fourteen in his first life: wild and brave and a little reckless. Percy matched him easily. His head was clear now and his HP was back. He was Level 64, and the boy was a squire with a borrowed sword. In ten minutes, he had young Arthur on his back in the dirt of the courtyard, with the squire's sword lying three yards away.
The boy lay there for a moment, breathing hard.
Then he looked over at the stone.
"Oh," he said softly. "Oh. I see."
He got up. He walked to the stone. He put his hand on the hilt of the glowing sword.
And he pulled it out like it was nothing.
[PHASE 2: THE SWORD IN THE STONE.]
[Prince Arthur has drawn EXCALIBUR.]
[All stats of Prince Arthur increased by 50%.]
The light hit Percy like a wave.
It wasn't just glowing. It was blazing, gold and white, so bright it threw shadows behind everything in the courtyard. The boy holding it changed in front of Percy's eyes. He wasn't taller, or older. But he stood differently. He stood like someone who'd just found out who he was.
The next ten minutes were very, very different from the first ten.
Excalibur cut through everything. Percy's lightning split around it like water around a rock. His bronze xiphos was chipped and notched after the first three exchanges. And the young king came at him with a speed and a certainty that hadn't been there before, and drove him back across the courtyard, step by step. Percy took a cut across the ribs. Another across his thigh.
[HP: 1,180 → 640]
I can't beat the sword, Percy realized. Nothing can beat that sword.
So don't fight the sword.
Fight the boy.
The boy was fifteen. He'd pulled a sword out of a stone two minutes ago and found out he was a king. And he was fighting like it. All attack. All glory. Every swing was a little too big, a little too proud. He was a boy who'd just learned he couldn't lose.
Percy knew exactly what that felt like. He'd been that boy once, with a pen in his pocket that turned into a sword.
He dropped back. He let the next huge swing go by him. The next one too. He let young Arthur chase him around the courtyard. And when Excalibur came down in a great, shining, overconfident arc meant to end it, Percy wasn't there.
[Shadow Step.]
He came out of the shadow behind the stone. Excalibur bit deep into the gray rock where he'd been standing, and stuck there. Just for a second. Just long enough.
Percy put the edge of his xiphos against the back of the young king's neck. Gently.
Prince Arthur froze, with both hands on a sword that was stuck in a rock.
Then he started to laugh.
"That's the second time," he said. "Isn't it. That you've beaten someone better than you by not being where they expected."
"It's kind of my thing," Percy said.
The boy let go of Excalibur. He turned around. And he looked at Percy with a face that was suddenly much, much older.
"It's a good thing," he said. "Remember it. When you're the one with the sword everyone's afraid of. Somebody will always be standing where you don't expect."
Then he faded, like morning mist. And Excalibur faded with him.
[MINI-BOSS DEFEATED: PRINCE ARTHUR (Lv 67)]
[+52,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 64 → Level 66]
The doors of the throne room opened.
King Arthur was sitting on a plain wooden chair at the far end of a long, plain stone room.
He was older than Percy had imagined. Fifty, maybe, with gray in his short beard and lines around his eyes. He wore a simple circlet of gold on his brow and a long blue cloak over plain mail. Excalibur lay across his knees, sheathed, its hilt worn smooth by long years of his hand.
He didn't get up. He just watched Percy walk the length of the room, and when Percy stopped in front of him, he looked at him for a long time.
[FINAL BOSS: ARTHUR PENDRAGON, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING]
[Level: 70]
"Sit down," said the King.
There was a chair beside the throne. It was old and dark and carved with strange runes. And Percy saw, with a cold feeling in his stomach, that it was the only chair in the whole castle with no name on it.
[HIDDEN QUEST UNLOCKED: THE SIEGE PERILOUS.]
[Sit in the Seat of Danger. Those found unworthy will be destroyed.]
"That's the Siege Perilous," Percy said slowly. "Isn't it. The chair that kills anybody who isn't supposed to sit in it."
"It is," said Arthur.
"And you want me to sit in it."
"I want to know if you will."
Percy looked at the chair. It was very quiet in the throne room.
Great Sage. What are the odds?
[Great Sage cannot calculate the worthiness of the Host. It is not a quantity Great Sage can measure.]
Great. Thanks.
[Great Sage believes the Host is worthy.]
Percy blinked.
Is that a calculation?
[No.]
He sat down.
The chair was cold. Colder than the Frozen Abyss. Colder than Tartarus. And the second he sat in it, the throne room went away.
He was standing in Cabin Three, in another world. In the middle of the night, years ago. The night Annabeth had come to tell him it was over. He watched himself sitting on the edge of his bunk with his face in his hands.
Then he was on Half-Blood Hill, watching camp turn its back on him.
Then he was in an apartment on the Upper East Side, standing in a doorway. And he didn't look at what was on the floor. He didn't have to. He knew.
Then he was in Tartarus. Years of it. The burning air, the black rivers, the screaming dark. All of it, at once, pressing down on him.
And a voice, very quiet, asked:
Whom do you serve?
Percy stood in the middle of the worst moments of his whole life. And he found that he wasn't afraid of them anymore. He wasn't angry at them either. They were just there. They were what had happened. They were part of him, the way the scar on his arm was part of him, the way the lightning was.
"The ones nobody else does," he said. "Because I know what it's like. Because I was one of them."
And he opened his eyes in the throne room.
He was still sitting in the Siege Perilous. He was still alive.
The runes on the chair were glowing softly gold. And slowly, letter by letter, as if an invisible hand were carving it, a name was appearing across the top of the chairback.
PERSEUS.
[HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: THE SIEGE PERILOUS.]
[The Host has been found worthy of a seat at the Round Table.]
[Title acquired: KNIGHT OF THE SIEGE PERILOUS.]
[HONOR +5.]
King Arthur was smiling.
"Fifteen hundred years," he said quietly. "Fifteen hundred years that chair has sat empty, waiting. Galahad sat in it once, and then went away to find the Grail, and never came back." He stood up. He drew Excalibur, and the light filled the throne room like a sunrise. "Now stand up, Sir Perseus. There is one more thing I must see. I must see how you fight when everything is at stake. Bring all of yourself. Your shadows. Your lightning. Everything. A king fights with his whole kingdom behind him. So should you."
Percy stood.
And he brought everything.
It was the best fight of his life.
Not the hardest. Lancelot had been harder, in a way, and the Doppelganger had been crueler. But it was the best. It was the first fight in either of his lives where he got to use everything he was, all at once, against someone who wanted him to.
He brought the shadows. All nine of them poured out of the dark of the throne room. Asterion with his axe. Fang howling. Chi-Chi roaring fire from her lion's head. Gorrath and Lazarus and Gloop. Thing One and Thing Two skittering up the walls. And Rime, the shadow dragon, filling the whole high ceiling with frost and wings.
Arthur met them all.
Excalibur blazed, and the shadows broke apart wherever it touched them, scattering like smoke and re-forming, scattering and re-forming. The King moved through them like a man walking through a storm, steady and certain and unstoppable.
Percy brought the sky. He brought the newly woken Sorcerer in him, the bloodline magic singing in his veins for the first time.
[METAMAGIC: TWINNED SPELL.]
[LIGHTNING CALL x2.]
Two bolts at once, from two directions. Arthur caught one on the flat of Excalibur, and the other on a shield that appeared on his arm out of nowhere. It was a round shield, painted with the image of a woman holding a child.
[PRIDWEN, Shield of Arthur.]
Percy brought the Monk. Speed and footwork and Focus, darting in and out of the King's reach. He brought the Fighter. Second Wind when his HP dropped. Action Surge when he saw an opening. He brought everything Chiron had ever taught him, and everything Luke had, and Clarisse, and Annabeth, and a lifetime of monsters.
And it still wasn't enough.
[HP: 1,560 → 1,020]
[HP: 1,020 → 610]
[HP: 610 → 240]
The King was Level 70, and he was the King. Every time Percy thought he had him, Excalibur was there.
In the end, it came down to one moment.
Rime had frozen the floor of the throne room solid. Arthur's feet slipped, just for an instant, on the ice. And Percy saw it. He poured every last drop of lightning he had left into his battered bronze xiphos until it burned like a star, and he swung it at the King with everything he had.
Arthur brought Excalibur up to meet it.
The two swords met in the middle of the throne room, the cheap bronze training sword and the greatest blade ever forged by mortal or fae.
There was a sound like a bell breaking.
The xiphos shattered.
It blew apart in Percy's hand, into a hundred glittering bronze fragments. The lightning went everywhere, cracking across the walls and ceiling in a web of blue-white fire. Percy was thrown backward across the ice, and hit the far wall, and slid down it, with nothing in his hand but a broken hilt.
And on the floor in front of him, spinning slowly on the ice, was something that hadn't been there before.
A sliver of steel. As long as his hand. Bright as moonlight. Glowing.
Percy stared at it. Then he looked up at the King.
Arthur was standing in the middle of the throne room with Excalibur in his hand, looking down at his sword. At the very tip of the blade, where the steel came to a point, there was a tiny, jagged notch.
A piece was missing.
"Fifteen hundred years," the King said softly. "And no blade in all the world has ever so much as scratched her." He looked at Percy across the ice. He wasn't angry. He was smiling. "Pick it up, Sir Perseus."
Percy crawled across the ice. He picked up the sliver of Excalibur in one shaking hand.
It was warm. And it was humming, very faintly. A sound like a promise.
"The sword chooses," said Arthur. "It always has. It chose me, in the stone, when I was a boy who did not know his own name. It has just chosen you. A piece of it. As much of it as you are ready for." He sheathed Excalibur. "The rest will wait. When you have built your table, the one you spoke of in the Siege, a place where no one sits higher than any other, come find the rest of her. She will be waiting."
He held out his hand.
Percy took it, and the King of Camelot pulled him to his feet.
"Well fought," said Arthur Pendragon. "Well fought, little knight. Go home now. Build something that lasts longer than I did."
And he faded, smiling, into gold.
[FINAL BOSS DEFEATED: ARTHUR PENDRAGON (Lv 70)]
[MAIN QUEST COMPLETE: PROVE YOURSELF BEFORE THE KING.]
[FLOOR 10 CLEARED.]
[GATE FLOOR CLEARED. STRATUM I COMPLETE.]
[+90,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 66 → Level 68]
[STRATUM REWARD:]
[CLASS ADVANCEMENT I]
[Fighter → Tier I: Knight-Errant. (Mounted and armored combat mastery. Challenge: force a single enemy to duel the Host.)]
[Monk → Tier I: Way of the Open Hand. (Strikes may knock down, push, or disarm.)]
[Sorcerer → Tier I: Storm-Born Ascendant. (Lightning spells cost 20% less MP. The Host may fly briefly while channeling.)]
[Knight Armor Set of Camelot (5 pieces)]
[Holy Sigils x3]
[Summon Deck (holds all Summon Cards)]
[Title acquired: THREAD-WALKER.]
[LEGENDARY QUEST ITEM: EXCALIBUR FRAGMENT.]
[The Fragment seeks a weapon. Combine?]
Percy looked down at the broken hilt of his training sword, still clutched in his other hand.
It was such a cheap thing. A bronze-edged xiphos from a rack in the Spindle Room, the first day the System had come. He'd carried it through ten floors. Goblins and orcs and the Minotaur. Medusa's garden. The Furies. A hellhound in the Mississippi. A swamp god. A Fury on a bus. It had never been anything special.
Yes, he thought. Combine.
He pressed the Excalibur Fragment into the broken hilt.
The light went up like a fountain.
It poured out of the hilt, gold and silver, and wound around itself, and around the bronze shards of the old blade that still lay scattered across the ice. They came flying back to it. Every one. They spun up into the air in a glittering whirlwind and slammed together, and the light poured into the cracks, and the whole thing changed.
When it was over, he was holding a sword.
It was still a xiphos. Leaf-shaped and short and Greek. But the bronze was paler now, almost gold, and down the center of the blade ran a single thread of bright silver steel that pulsed softly with light. The hilt was wrapped in dark blue leather. And when he moved it, the whole sword rippled, very faintly, like something alive that was trying on shapes.
[WEAPON FORGED: PROTEUS, THE SHIFTING BLADE]
[Rank: Legendary (Sealed). Grows with the Host.]
[Unique Ability: The Six Realms.]
[Proteus may assume the form of any weapon within the Six Realms. When the Host touches a weapon, or defeats its wielder, Proteus may copy that weapon's form and properties and store it. Each Realm holds 3 slots. Stored forms may be swapped at will.]
[I. Realm of the Blade (swords, daggers, axes): Bronze Xiphos · Arondight (Lancelot) · Empty]
[II. Realm of the Spear (spears, lances, polearms): Lance of Camelot · Empty · Empty]
[III. Realm of the Bow (bows, slings, thrown weapons): Empty · Empty · Empty]
[IV. Realm of the Ward (shields, bucklers): Pridwen (Arthur) · Empty · Empty]
[V. Realm of the Fist (gauntlets, claws, cestus): Empty · Empty · Empty]
[VI. Realm of the Heavens: LOCKED. Requires a weapon of divine origin.]
[Rest form: a bronze ring threaded with silver.]
[Note: Excalibur cannot be copied. It is not only a weapon.]
Percy turned the sword over in his hands, slowly. Then he thought ring, and it folded down in a ripple of light into a plain bronze band with a thread of silver around it, sitting snug on the middle finger of his right hand.
He looked at that last locked line for a long time.
Requires a weapon of divine origin.
He thought about the Bolt blueprint, sitting half-finished in his inventory since Floor 7. About its last requirement: touch and understand a true sky-weapon.
About where he was going in the morning.
Soon, he thought.
[Tower time elapsed: 8 days.]
[The Host's real body is waking.]
[EXITING THE LOOM.]
Percy opened his eyes on the floor of the Sea Breeze Inn.
Gray light was coming through the thin motel curtains. Lupe was snoring on his chest. Somewhere outside, a garbage truck was beeping.
And the fog came down on him like a collapsing ceiling.
[THREAD-WORN (Severe).]
[INT and WIS reduced by 30% for 48 real hours.]
He lay there and breathed through it. His whole body ached. Not tower-ache, which faded when he left. Real ache. Ten percent of eight days of injuries, settling into his real bones all at once. There was a long bruise down his ribs where the young king had cut him, and his right thigh felt like somebody had kicked it. His knuckles were split.
He lifted his right hand and looked at it in the gray light.
The bronze ring with the silver thread was on his middle finger.
He smiled.
"You were talking in your sleep."
Percy turned his head. Annabeth was sitting up in the other bed with her knees pulled up and her Yankees cap in her hands, watching him. She looked like she'd been awake for a while.
"Was I?" he said.
"You said I yield. And then you said no. And then you said ring." She looked at his hand. At the ring, which hadn't been there last night. Her eyes narrowed. "And you've got a bruise on your face that wasn't there when we went to bed."
Percy didn't say anything.
Annabeth looked at him for a long time.
"Someday," she said quietly, "you're going to tell me what you are."
"Someday," Percy agreed.
She nodded slowly, as if that was enough for now. Then she swung her legs off the bed and put her cap on her head.
"Get up," she said. "Wake the boys. It's the nineteenth of June." Her gray eyes were steady. "Today we go to the Underworld."