The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 18

If dragons were famous for their breath, and manticores were famous for their poison, then the thing the basilisk was best known for was its petrifying stare. Normally, that was a bit of romanticism added to accounts of encounters, as it was technically more of a paralyzing stare that targeted muscles and locked them up.

In this case, Sorin suspected the description might be a bit more literal. Magic poured out of the basilisk’s eyes, and the world started to turn gray around Sorin. Sand crusted over and hardened, clumping together into thick chucks that took on decidedly pebble-like textures. His own body felt stiff, like his joints no longer functioned and his lungs couldn’t expand. Even his heart slowed down.

That was from a mere half-second’s exposure to the basilisk’s merciless gaze. With all the elemental power it had absorbed from bathing in the font of earth magic for God only knew how long, it could literally inject earth magic into anything it looked out, even the ground itself. Given enough time, this single monster could transform the entire floor from a vast, trackless desert to a barren expanse of smooth, featureless stone.

Or maybe the tower itself would intervene to prevent that. It doesn’t matter, either way, because it’s going to be dead in a minute.

Sorin sprinted straight at the monster, triggering Speed Burst while he moved and blurring through the intervening space. The moment he was outside its line of sight, the heavy, stiff feeling vanished. He came to a halt right between its two front legs, sword leading, and thick, leathery skin parting against its edge.

Though he was still missing anything that might help him fly or even jump higher, he had both his body’s natural athleticism and the strength enhancement of Warrior’s Vigilance to give him reach. The sword went up, powered by nothing more than raw strength, and split open three feet of lizard neck before the basilisk could react.

Blood poured out, black to Sorin’s vision, but he was already gone before it could splash across him. The basilisk lashed out with one of its front limbs as its head swung around on a serpentine neck to pin him down with its petrifying stare. Sorin had anticipated that, however, and as a farewell gift before moving, he’d thrown a blade of force at it.

He was satisfied to see his prediction of how the basilisk would move had been mostly accurate. The spell clipped its right eye, causing the monster to hiss in sudden pain and rear back up. Even if it had taken the shot head on, it wouldn’t have been enough to do real damage, but the impact was still enough to startle the overgrown lizard and disrupt its gaze attack.

Sorin wove through limbs longer than he was tall and thicker around than his waist. The basilisk raked at him blindly for a moment, but he was too fast to get caught in such an uncoordinated attack. If the monster had been a normal example of its kind, the fight would have already been close to over. Common basilisks had their paralytic gaze and their sheer physical might, and nothing else.

A wall of sand rose out of the ground and crashed against Sorin like a wave, slamming him into the basilisk’s flank as it broke against flesh. Iron Bulwark kept him safe, though it did eat a significant chunk of his anima reserves to create a full-body shield against the impact. Before Sorin could recover, jagged shards of shale appeared in the air.

Sorin wasn’t honestly sure if the basilisk had conjured them out of nothing or simply seized them from the part of the cave it had already petrified. It didn’t matter much either way; the basilisk had more ammunition than it could possibly need. Blades of stone flashed through the air, far too many for him to keep track of.

He did the only thing he could: he triggered Speed Burst, then leaped straight up onto the basilisk and went over the side. Stone struck scaled flesh and shattered into a million pieces of shrapnel, but none of it hit Sorin. Unfortunately, the basilisk didn’t seem to care either. Sorin chalked that up to some sort of earth magic shenanigans because he had the measure of its physical defenses, and they weren’t that good.

Basilisks weren’t smart, not usually, so Sorin wasn’t expecting what it did next. He’d imagined a repeat of five seconds ago, where it tried to get its eyes pointed in his direction and he kept ahead of it. Instead, the damn thing lifted its bulk up as high as it could on its ten legs, which was more than high enough for Sorin to walk beneath its belly without ducking his head, and it sent another salvo of shale at him.

There was an opportunity there. The belly was a vulnerability, something most reptilian monsters instinctively knew to keep low to the ground. Normally, Sorin would have taken immediate advantage, but it wasn’t feasible, not if he wanted to avoid a few hundred pounds of high-speed, sharp-edged stone.

Screw it. I can take the hit and end this fight right now.

Iron Bulwark flared, sapping his anima dangerously fast. Speed Burst got him into position, and the rest was simply the result of his muscles and his sword. He split the basilisk’s belly open for eight feet as he did his best to avoid the majority of the shale by darting sideways, and unlike the chest wound, this time it felt it.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting NovelBin for this novel and more.

The basislisk’s whole body rippled in agony, and it practically flung itself across the cavern to get away from Sorin. That was the best possible thing it could do, if only because Sorin had been using its own bulk to shield himself from its view. Now he needed to close the distance again, and this time he had to move through a hail storm of sharp rocks to do it.

He blurred, vanishing from casual observation for a second as he dodged around the chunks of flying shale. That put him dangerously close to the font, but he was reasonably confident a self-contained kinetic spell wasn’t going to contaminate anything. If he was wrong, so be it. A second Speed Burst got him up close to the basilisk again.

Then he stumbled, his knees spontaneously locking up and the ground taking on a grayish tint. The basilisk hissed in pain and anger, and the petrification doubled in strength. Sorin couldn’t resist it for long, and he didn’t fancy his chances of survival as a stone statue. No one would be coming to rescue him.

Force Edge provided him a way to fight back, but now that there was some distance, the basilisk wove back and forth. It couldn’t perfectly dodge every shot, especially not when Sorin was throwing them five at a time, but it did a good enough job that it always kept at least one eye on him.

He wasn’t idle, either. Speed Burst kept him moving forward, even as more and more pieces of shale whipped through the air at him. The distance between them kept shrinking, and the basilisk was too injured to keep fleeing. Half its guts were hanging out of its body, and if it had been a normal monster, Sorin would have retreated and simply waited for it to succumb to its injuries.

There was no guaranteeing victory against such an obviously magical foe, though, not until it actually died. Sorin made contact, deftly dodging one of its clawed, three-fingered hands despite it feeling like he was ripping his knee apart to do it. His sword flashed, and blood splattered against the stone. The basilisk’s jaw split open, revealing sharp fangs.

He was moving too slow now. Dodging was impossible. There was only one card left to play, and Sorin honestly wasn’t sure how much good it would do. If he didn’t try, though, he was going to exhaust the rest of his reserves when Iron Bulwark triggered to keep him from being pulverized.

Still Winter unfolded around him. The temperature immediately dropped to cold enough to freeze a man solid in a matter of minutes, and the basilisk felt it. Reptilian monsters always felt the cold more keenly than it seemed they should. It aborted its attempt to bite him, jerking its head back so quickly that Sorin almost thought he’d imagined it coming for him at all. Only the coating of frost on its snout proved otherwise.

It wasn’t so fast now, but Sorin still didn’t want to pit his Still Winter against its petrification to see which ability could do the job first. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. His sword arm worked up and down almost too fast to follow as he pushed Speed Burst to give him everything his body could take. One leg came free, and he was starting on a second when its tail came around. The back spines thinned down to a double row there, but they were still a foot long and sharp as any needle.

Sorin threw himself to his belly and felt the wind on his face as the tail whipped over his head. Then he rolled, throwing more force blades up at the basilisk’s face to distract it while he climbed to his feet. The monster wasn’t even looking at him now, though. Its eyes were firmly locked on the font, and, ignoring Sorin, it tried to scramble back to it.

The hell you will!

Sorin took another leg, then leaped forward to intercept the massive lizard. Now that it wasn’t actively trying to petrify him, Blood of the Mountain was working hard to reverse the damage. Every second that passed saw him moving faster, and the basilisk gave him five or six free shots just while it scrambled to escape the range of Still Winter.

The battle didn’t end with some decisive blow. He didn’t behead the fel beast or anything like that. No, Sorin simply did what he’d been doing the entire time: he kept hitting it with a sharp piece of metal. Every wound built up, and with the cold sapping its strength, the basilisk never made it back to the font. It succumbed to its injuries halfway there, and though some were indeed severe, it wasn’t any single one that could claim credit.

Sorin released Still Winter the instant he felt an enormous shock of anima hit his soulspace. Forget giant spiders. Elemental-touched basilisks are where it’s at, he thought to himself as he surged up toward rank 7. By all rights, he ought to reach it from this fight alone, but the tower wasn’t that generous. Another spider would do it. A few of those sand elementals probably would have pushed him past the tipping point. Really, almost anything would have been enough.

Speaking of sand elementals…

They’d all fled or been destroyed when the basilisk had emerged, but now that the monster was dead, Sorin could see movement in the sand scattered across the stone around the font. More sand was spewing into the air to replace what had been lost, and it was quickly increasing in volume to the point of being blinding.

This thing must have been eating a huge portion of the elemental energy coming out of this font. This chamber is going to be buried in sand in an hour at this rate.

“Lorvaine!” he called out. “Whatever you’re planning on doing, you’d better do it soon.”

“Vanir? You’re… alive?” came the return yell.

“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” he muttered to himself, though it had been a bit closer than he preferred. He probably could have gotten away if he’d needed to, but he was glad he hadn’t had to test that out.

There was a soulprint inside the body, which he was tempted to cut free, but since Lorvaine had dibs on it, he decided it was her problem. She could work on that, and he’d take care of the remaining elementals. It wouldn’t take long to claim the rest of the anima he needed, and he meant to be rank 7 when he returned to the surface.

Lorvaine appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, her jaw hanging slack. Sorin beckoned her down, pointed out the soulprint, and left her to do that messy work while he attended to his own.