A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Ronan, on his back, arm out at an angle arms did not go. Finn on one hand in the mud. Raymond down on the knee again with his sword being used as a prop. Cillian standing with an arm raised and nothing coming out of it. Maeve holding Finn up and looking straight back at James, and she did not say anything, and she did not have to.

Across the wreckage, the red light finished knitting itself shut over Baldwin’s shoulder and he started walking.

James opened a window nobody could see but him.

[REANIMATED SLOTS: 1/5 OCCUPIED]

[ANATHEMA — ALICE]

*Alice does not exist.*

Eight meters.

James opened it.

---

She arrived the way weather arrives.

The air went thick and sweet and wrong, and Alice was simply standing four meters to James’s left with both enormous black wings spread and settling, the broken halo dark behind her head, her hands empty and open at her sides.

[ALICE — FIRST DISCIPLE OF LUST]

[HP: 102,000 / 102,000]

[AUTHORITY: DESIRE / LUST / FALLEN DIVINITY]

[UNIQUE UNDEAD DESIGNATION: ANATHEMA]

Finn said something that was not a word.

Maeve’s whole body turned toward her, and the light she had been holding on Finn wavered, and she pulled it back by force.

Ronan, flat on his back in the mud, got his head up. Cillian said, quietly, ”Oh, that’s her. That’s actually her.”

And Raymond — who had never seen a Floor 20 broadcast, who had no idea what a First Disciple was, who knew nothing at all except what was in front of him — looked at the winged woman who had appeared out of nothing beside the necromancer and understood exactly one thing, which was that whatever had just arrived on this field was worse than his brother.

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** ALICE

**[ZeroFan]:** NO

**[ZeroFan]:** NO FUCKING WAY

**[ShieldMainSiobhan]:** THAT IS THE ORIGINAL

**[user88317]:** FLOOR 20?????????

**[FrontierWife]:** SHES WITH JAMES???

**[CorkClimber]:** WHAT DID HE DO

**[MOD]:** Slow mode enabled.

Alice looked around the battlefield without any hurry whatsoever.

At the two armies. At the bodies. At Baldwin, closing, wrapped in red. At Team Zero in pieces on the ground.

Then at James, and at the black ring behind his head, and at the horn.

Something moved through her face that James could not read at all.

”Help us,” he said.

”No,” Alice said.

---

He had expected a great many things and had not expected how *bored* she sounded.

”You put me in a box,” she said. ”Three months. Not once. Not a word, not a summons, not a question — and now there is finally something on a field you cannot kill, and here I am.” Her head tilted. ”Ask me again. I want to hear it again.”

”Alice—”

”You need me.” She smiled, and there was nothing warm anywhere in it. ”Say that part.”

Baldwin arrived while she was speaking, because Baldwin was not going to wait.

Ronan got up off the ground with an arm that could not hold a shield and put the shield in the way anyway. Finn came in on Baldwin’s flank and did not try to hurt him, just kept him turning. Raymond got off the knee and threw himself into his brother’s path with a wound in his side that was not going to let him do that many more times.

Maeve held all three of them together and watched Alice with her jaw locked, because she had been on the wall at the western settlement and she remembered exactly what those wings could do.

Cillian stood ready with nothing in his hands.

James could have ended the argument in one word.

The contract was right there. He had used it once, in a ruined throne room, and it had folded a First Disciple of Lust onto one knee in front of him while she fought it with everything she had. He could say *fight* and she would fight, whatever she wanted.

Alice was watching him not do it.

He saw the moment she noticed — a small shift, her eyes going from his face to his hands and back, waiting for a command that was not arriving.

”A deal,” James said.

”You *have* a deal. You have a leash.”

”A different one.” He kept the scythe up between her and the fighting, because Baldwin was fifteen meters away and everything he said had to be short. ”You help us here — because you choose to, not because I make you — and storage stops being where you live.”

Alice went very still.

”Explain that.”

”You stay out. Manifested, whenever it’s possible, which is most of the time. Not brought out for a fight and put back in a box when it’s over.” James’s arms were shaking from the scythe and he did not lower it. ”You get to exist. Talk to people, walk around, be seen. I stop pretending you’re not there.”