The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 9

“Oh, hi,” Sorin said, trying to inject a bit more enthusiasm than he actually felt into the words. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

“I don’t know why. The portal hub isn’t that big, and we were going the same way anyway,” the mage said. “You really shouldn’t have gone off on your own, though. It only takes one mistake—”

“I am aware,” Sorin interrupted. “But I didn’t have time to go at your pace.”

“Right! Your friends.” Calder paused and looked around. There was no one with Sorin, of course. He’d left them all back at camp. “I guess you’re still searching.”

“I found them,” Sorin said. “I’m just getting us some food. You don’t have to worry about me running around by myself.”

“Good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you showed up when you did, but God, you got so lucky making it that far…”

“Calder, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve got to finish getting supplies and get back to my team. We’ve all been living out of our bags for a week now, and no one’s eager to try out desert scorpion with a slice of cactus on the side.”

“Oh! Sorry, right. You’re… you know… You’re busy. Listen, uh, we’re going to take a crack at the portal guardian tomorrow. I just wanted to invite you to come see. I’m pretty confident we’re going to get it on the first try, but even if we don’t, it’ll definitely help you to see the fight before you attempt it yourself. Maybe you can bring your team with you. It’d be nice to meet them.”

Uh… This is weird.

Calder seemed like a nice enough guy—a little absent-minded and kind of unwittingly condescending in his fumbling attempts to be helpful—and Sorin didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but he really didn’t have time for whatever it was that was happening here. He was already trying to get out of the portal hub as fast as possible and expecting trouble when he left; hanging out with Calder just wasn’t in the cards.

“I’ll bring it up to them,” Sorin said, internally wincing when he saw Calder perk up, “but I can’t make any promises. Right now, I’ve got people waiting for me. Sorry, but I just don’t have time to chat.”

“Of course, right. You’re busy. I’ll leave you to it. It was nice seeing you again, Vanir. Don’t be a stranger.”

“You too.”

Calder wandered off through the thin crowd of climbers, eventually rejoining one of the archer girls a few hundred feet away. Sorin watched him go for a few seconds, a frown on his face and his eyes picking out Calder’s path well before the mage finished walking it. Then he shook his head and put the chance encounter out of his mind.

Right. Food. Spices if they have it, but I’m not holding my breath looking at this selection. Let’s see how far I can stretch fifty danirs.

* * *

Half an hour later, Sorin was walking out of the portal hub on a westbound route. There were no roads or trails through the desert, but he knew his way well enough. Despite everything that changed from floor to floor, the stars never seemed to. Sometimes they were gone, but whenever they were visible, he could always find the same familiar constellations.

Strange that the stars are the same in this new tower, he thought as he jogged along. So many other things are different. The floors are completely changed. So are the monsters, or at least where I would expect to find them. Different portal guardians, too. But the stars remain. Why is that?

He tucked that thought away as he approached the sand dunes hiding what he suspected was at least five men from view. They’d seen him come in from this direction, and he’d noticed three different people paying attention to him as he was leaving. As far he could tell, they weren’t Hellions. If they were, they were low ranked local climbers, and none of them had gone running for the portal to tell on him.

It was far more likely that they were scouts for a band of muggers who thought business was better preying on climbers than fighting monsters. The sensible part of Sorin’s mind said that he ought to just veer out of his way a few thousand feet, that if he avoided the dunes where he suspected the ambush awaited him, he could leave the problem behind.

A different part reminded him that he’d seen this type plenty in the past, that he almost certainly wasn’t their first victim, but if he dealt with them now, he would be their last. If he avoided the fight, the next person to come through might not be strong enough to defend themselves.

Besides, I could use a little variety in my exercise. All this running on sand is getting old.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The only surprising part of the ambush was that two of the climbers burst straight out of the sand as he ran over their position. They’d started fidgeting as he drew closer, which Blind Sense caught for him even though there was a thin layer of sand covering them. He’d actually altered his angle ever so slightly to make sure he ran between them, but it was impressive how accurately they’d judged his route from probably a quarter mile out.

Sand sprayed in every direction, including at Sorin’s face. He scrunched his eyes closed and twisted, letting Blind Sense untangle the overwhelming deluge of information as the whole world shifted with motion around him. Almost all of that was just sand being flung—useless information that he didn’t need. He looked past that and found the human bodies drawing blades to attack.

Not even going to give me a chance to surrender? Well, no need to go easy on them then.

Ice blades erupted out of him, six of them at once, and pierced the flying walls of sand to draw blood from Sorin’s attackers. He got one in the hand, causing the man to cry out as his blade went flying out of his grip. The other managed to hold onto his sword, but took two ice blades into his unarmored knees and a third into the artery in his leg. Unless he had some way to heal that injury, he was going to bleed out quickly.

At the same time, four other climbers charged into the edge of Blind Sense’s radius. That was a few more than he’d been expecting, but he decided it was a good thing. There were probably more that belonged to this gang still at the portal hub, not that he was going to bother looking for them, and the more he killed here, the less there’d be left to bother anyone else.

The screaming started then, especially from the one who’d taken the blade to the inside of his leg, and the charge stumbled to a halt. Clearly, things hadn’t gone the way the bandits had been expecting. They rallied quickly, however, and immediately picked up speed again.

Sand came to life around Sorin, reaching up to grab at his legs and pin him down, but the effect was too weak to be more than a minor hindrance. If whoever had commanded it had used it after he’d closed into melee, it might have been a distraction at a crucial moment. Instead, it was a worthless gambit played too soon.

Sorin burst forward, breaking the sand’s hold with raw strength and drawing his blue-bladed sword. His own rush was more than five times faster than the bandits’, and it ended with four more ice blades flung at each of the men’s eyes while he buried his blade in the leader’s guts.

The man didn’t even seem to realize what had happened. He kept trying to run forward, only to get thrown onto his back when Sorin shoulder-checked him. His sword whipped left, then right, drawing great gouts of blood from his victims and howls of pain to match. Only one of them had managed to block Sorin’s ice blade from blinding him, and he looked ready to run, not fight.

Some calculation in his head must have landed on attacking being the better odds, because he lifted an axe that was barely more than a glorified hatchet and leaped forward to swing it down in an overhand chop. Sorin activated Speed Burst again and circled behind the man, calmly ramming his sword up under the bandit’s ribs and killing him.

The fight lasted a little over ten seconds, and half of that was spent heading back to where the two burrowers were still trying to figure out how their ambush had failed. He put the bleeder out of his misery, then crouched down in front of the last remaining bandit.

“You guys working for anyone?” he asked.

The bandit just stared at him, blood dribbling from the ice-blade puncture wounds and a grimace of pain on his face. Sorin conjured up another ice blade and let it float above his finger.

“Let’s try this again. Are you boys independents, or do you have a backer?”

“In—Inde—In—”

The bandit locked up again, and Sorin took a second to really study him. Young. Maybe eighteen. Too stupid to know any better, I guess, not that that’s an excuse. He’s still a killer.

“Independent then. Good. How many of you are there?”

“Ten,” the bandit gasped out, his eyes wide. They never looked away from that spinning chunk of ice floating above Sorin’s hand.

“Well, four now,” Sorin said.

The man could obviously do the math. “Wait—” he started to say.

The ice blade drove itself through his eye and into his brain, killing him instantly.

And this is why I harp on them about defensive soulprints.

* * *

“How’d it go?” Rue asked.

Sorin grunted and dropped the bag of foodstuffs near Odric. “I don’t think there were any Hellions there. If there were, they either didn’t spot me, or I didn’t spot them, because they didn’t try anything that I could see. I did get you a soulprint, though. You’re going to want to prioritize this one. It’s called Reach.”

“What does it do?”

“It creates a sort of shadowy anima blade around your real one, just for a second. When you swing a weapon, it can strike things farther away, which makes it an excellent tool to surprise an enemy with when they try to dodge. The stronger the soulprint gets, the longer the range. Get it up to rank C, and I’d say you could hit things from fifteen or twenty feet away with the swords you’re using right now.”

“Uh, Sorin, are you okay?” Odric asked.

“Yeah,” Sorin said. “Why?”

“You’ve got blood all over your leg.”

“Oh, that. Bunch of bandits tried to jump me when I was leaving the hub.”

The whole team was staring at him now. Sorin scowled back.

“And what happened to the bandits?” Nemari finally asked.

“I killed them, of course.”

“Any good loot?” Rue asked.

“Not really. They said they were independent, but I think they were answering to someone. Otherwise, they’d have had better gear instead of a couple of cheap swords and axes. They didn’t even have armor. The attack was too well coordinated for it to be their first time, though.”

“They could have been Hellions,” Nemari reasoned.

Sorin nodded. “Possible, but unlikely. It was an opportunistic crime, and they were all rank 3. Samael would definitely send someone stronger if was him behind it. And they didn’t come at me with intent to capture. I’m not worried about it.”

He reached into his bag and handed the leathery tentacle to Rue, who eagerly accepted and absorbed it. “How much was this?” she asked.

“Two hundred.”

She froze for a second. “Ah… And… how much did you get for the loot?”

“About that much.”

Nemari sighed. “So, basically, we’re broke again?”

“At least we’ve got enough food to last a few weeks,” Odric told her.