The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 7

There was no doubt in Sorin’s mind that the message was for him. The sign had been placed at the back end of a little box canyon in the desert, which he took as an indication that it was still on Floor 3, with the words carved into the stone in a neat, elegant handwriting. They were so smooth that it had to be a soulprint at work to have made them.

Enjoy this curated selection of travel points.

Use it to speed your growth.

I’ll be waiting for you to catch up.

Don’t waste too much time with those insignificant locals.

-S

It was every half-realized fear Sorin had never dared to consciously think about hitting him at once. All of their efforts were meaningless. Samael knew where they were. He knew what they were doing. Sorin wasn’t outmaneuvering him with Liminal Gateway, either. Samael already knew all its secrets—or at least he’d figured out far more than Sorin had—and had proven to be entirely capable of tampering with Sorin’s own path.

Forcing himself to calm down, Sorin retreated back to the exit leading to his team. He fetched his bags, stepped back out, and immediately summoned the biggest, overcharged ice blade he could. It took three of them to smash the sign he’d carved into the stone to pieces, but he didn’t stop until the job was done.

“Uh… Everything okay there?” Rue asked while the others silently watched.

“Samael got into my liminal path and modified it,” Sorin said. “We’re not safe to use the gateway anymore. For all I know, he could walk right out of the entry symbol whenever he wants.”

“Does… Does this mean they know where we are?”

Sorin shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. This symbol only existed for a few minutes, and I’ve destroyed it now, so we should be safe there.”

“But it completely screws up our plan,” Nemari said.

“It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but it does mean I’m going to need to place the sign far enough away that if Samael steps through while I’m away, he won’t trip over you.”

It’s a good thing I didn’t put the sign on Floor 0 near the dead drop, but it’s not safe to use anymore. All Samael had to do was walk the length of my liminal space and see where it ended. There could be a dozen Hellions sitting there right now, waiting for me to pop out.

That didn’t seem right, though. Samael could have done that, but if he had, letting Sorin know he’d been there was a foolish mistake. Adding those three branches to his path, and then leaving him a message so there’d be no doubt who’d done it, had confirmed the Liminal Gateway wasn’t safe to use. In all honesty, it probably never had been.

It really came down to what Samael wanted, which he’d stated was for Sorin to climb the tower, and, once he had reached a comparable rank, to work with Samael. Sorin, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the man. The lack of morality behind setting up a criminal empire aside, the fact that he’d been here for at least a decade and hadn’t made it to the top of the tower by now was a huge point against him.

Whatever Samael’s priorities were, they didn’t align with Sorin’s. Worse, Samael only cared about Samael. Nothing good would come from working with the man. But for the moment, at least, we’re aligned in one way: we both want me to get stronger. The difference is that I’ll bet Samael only wants me to get powerful enough to be useful, not so much that I can challenge him. If I start using the methods he’s leaving for me, then I’m putting myself in his power. He’ll be able to keep an eye on my progress, stall me when he decides I’m done, and control me.

Liminal Gateway was too useful to abandon, not even considering that it was somehow tied to his transmigration between towers or that he hoped it would eventually lead him to a way to retrieve his original team. But it was already dangerous to use since voidlings could find him there, and with this adding on to it, there was just no way he could justify it.

They’d have to risk the portal hubs after carefully scouting them out. That was all there was to it. That would also be dangerous, but if Sorin had to pick between a random rank 10 Hellion thug or Samael himself, it wasn’t a difficult decision.

“The real problem, as I see it, is that we have to assume the previous spots I could travel to are all compromised. They probably aren’t—Samael doesn’t seem to actually want to capture us—but a single mistake could be my last if I walk through the gate back to Floor 0,” he said. “We’re going to have to try the portal hubs and hope we can do our trading there without being spotted.”

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“What if we use it against him?” Rue suggested. “Place the sign in a powerful monster lair, or booby trap the fuck out of the area. Let him walk through and get pasted. Problem solved.”

“It might work on Floor 15,” Sorin said. “I can’t see it slowing him down on Floor 3. But it’s an idea to keep in mind for the future.

“There is another option, but… It’s risky. Samael left me an exit to Floor 4, and Liminal Gateway has grown enough that I’m confident I can bring one other person with me. I could go to the next floor and ferry the rest of the team up. Assuming you can pass through without actually killing the portal guardian here, we could just skip this floor.

“We’d need a bit of luck—maybe ten minutes without Samael watching to get everyone through. Then we make a run for it and set up our basecamp the next floor up. From there, we can forage and scavenge as needed, bypassing the need for a portal hub or Bradford’s assistance.”

Left unsaid was that without being able to trade their loot, their progression would become severely limited. Maybe half of their soulprints came from their own kills, and almost none of their gear. Sorin had purchased everything but his weapon. Nemari had gotten a wand from the Antechamber, but lost it and had been forced to buy a replacement. One of Rue’s weapons was tower-forged, or rather they both were, but she’d bought one and found the other.

He could tell they were all thinking the same thing. Going it alone would slow them down tremendously and force them to over farm spots, sitting at max anima for the floor for weeks or even months trying to find the right soulprints instead of simply trading what they had for what they wanted. It was a bad solution.

They sat around nitpicking over the details and debating the best approach, but there really wasn’t a good solution. After half an hour, Sorin called it. He stood up and said, “The portal hub isn’t far from here. I’m rank 5, but anyone who can’t sense auras would see a rank 3. I’ll go try to sell this and pick up some foodstuffs. Then we relocate, get some rest, and start killing monsters tomorrow. The only way out of this is still to climb.”

“Maybe I should come with you,” Rue said. “You don’t even know what any of the Hellions look like.”

“All the ones you knew are dead,” he pointed out.

“Yeah… Okay, fair. But still, better not to go alone.”

“Rue,” he said softly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you literally can’t keep up with me. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Back before you know it.”

“Yeah, well… Make sure you do. We’re pretty much fucked out here on our own, and I don’t fancy trying to live off wasp goop for the rest of my life.”

“Understood. I won’t let you down.”

* * *

Sorin walked the last mile to catch his breath. Seven minutes straight of burning anima through Speed Burst had eaten the distance like nothing, but he didn’t want to arrive at the hub completely drained of energy, especially if he needed to make a quick getaway. Besides, rushing in would draw attention. There might not be Hellions there, but if there were, he still had the chance of doing his business and leaving without being spotted.

Unlike the first two floor hubs, this one was U-shaped. The portal was on a small spit of rock sticking out of the base of the mountain like a tree root, about twenty feet high and maybe a hundred long. There were no stairs leading up to it, and it was too narrow to build on, so climbers had set up their stalls around it. A single open lane bisected the U right at the curve, with the merchants themselves policing anybody who tried to encroach on that space.

Rather than any sort of permanence, the whole affair was a series of pavilions to keep the sun off the people, and those ranged from patched up tarps on poles to elaborate tents big enough to walk around inside. Of course, it was all built on a foundation of sand and dirt.

Weirdly, there were a lot of cacti at the portal hub. Sorin had seen them occasionally in the desert and learned that they were sometimes inhabited by a nature spirit, but he couldn’t imagine these ones would have been left alone if that were the case here. They loomed over the tents like giant, fat, needle-covered barrels ten feet wide at the base and twice as tall.

Maybe people just like the shade they throw.

Slowing down to a walk for the last five hundred feet, Sorin went into high alert. Blind Sense didn’t have the range he’d need to see into the hub yet, but his own eyes were good enough for the approach. It was only once he was among the pavilions and no one paid him any attention that he allowed himself to even slightly relax.

It can’t be that they don’t know we made it to Floor 3, he thought to himself. Maybe Samael truly just… doesn’t care? The team watching the Floor 2 portal guardian’s arena could have been after Rue specifically.

It didn’t make sense, no matter which way he turned the problem. He was missing something, and he needed to figure out what before it blindsided him. Once again, the only explanation he could come up with was that Samael wanted him to climb and was planning on snatching him up at a later date.

Or it could be that I’m just overthinking things, there are Hellion gang members here, and they’re going to attack me in the next thirty seconds. That would certainly make things simpler, if not necessarily easy.

“You all by yourself there, buddy?” someone asked, stepping into his way. “What’s wrong? Bite off more than you can chew out in the desert and get the rest of your team killed?”

“Aw, leave ‘im alone,” another climber said from where he was sitting at a rickety table next to a few kegs. “Les he wants to buy a drink, we don’t got no business wit’ ‘im.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Sorin said.

“Run along then. Don’t make me give you the boot. If you got no coin, you got no reason to loiter.”

Considering the bouncer for what amounted to a rickety roadside booze stand was only rank 3, Sorin wasn’t exactly afraid of his threats. There was nothing to be gained by arguing, though, so he just sidestepped the man and kept walking. He didn’t like the way the climber turned to stare at him as he left. The man’s fist was clenched on the hilt of his sword, and his gaze had a measure of greed in it.

Through Blind Sense, Sorin could feel the bouncer watch him turn into a large pavilion that advertised itself as buying and selling. He wondered how long it would be before he saw the man again, and whether he’d have to kill him next time they met.