The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 20

Two people stood on a sand skimmer, close enough that the man on the back had an arm wrapped around the woman’s waist. The skimmer was moving quite slow, probably because it wasn’t designed for a passenger, which made it easy to see their faces as they cruised by.

Standing on his own sand skimmer, Yoru watched with his jaw hanging open. “Impossible,” he sputtered. “How could… How did…? It can’t be him here, on Floor 3?”

It was an open secret among the families that the Black Hellion himself wanted Sorin found and captured. There was no way the man was just going about his business, bold as brass and out in broad daylight, groping a woman in public, no less. Yoru’s mind refused to believe what his eyes were telling him.

“Who is it?” Vendis asked.

Yoru blinked a few times, letting his eyes refocus on the immediate area instead of the distant desert. His team had all come to a halt around him, though no one but him had the abilities needed to pick out fine details from so far away.

“That guy from the ruin back on Floor 1. He caught up to us, looks like.”

“You think he’s been on the floor long?” the new front-liner asked. “Not that I’m afraid of a peak rank 3.”

“Always smart to know your target’s strengths and weaknesses before you make your move,” the water mage added.

“None of that,” Yoru said sharply, cutting the conversation off before they could get going. Hiring this team may have been a mistake, even if two of them are rank 4.

The Telpikes were honorable climbers. His family’s reputation grew or fell on his actions, and he wouldn’t sully their name killing other climbers. Sorin deserved a good thrashing for his theft, but not death. Of more practical concern was that the Black Hellions specifically wanted him alive, and as much as Yoru was disgusted by the gang, he couldn’t deny their strength.

Not even the high families could resist the Black Hellion if he ever recalled his heavies from the Void Wall. They’d wipe out all of Floor 0 in an afternoon. Even if they didn’t, just the act of stepping aside…

The truth of the matter was that none of them had any clue just how far the void had advanced. They only knew that it wouldn’t stop growing, and if they didn’t fight to hold it back, it would eventually eat everything down to Floor 0. Humanity would cease to exist. The Black Hellion was a necessary evil, for now.

Yoru still wouldn’t be handing Sorin over. Samael was an evil, evil man, and no one deserved to be subjected to him. A clean death was preferable. Despite everything between them, Yoru wished Sorin the best of luck in dodging the gang’s notice, though if the man was going to be so foolish as to roam around in the open like that, he was bound to be snatched up sooner or later.

“Forget him,” Yoru said. “We’ve got two more days of hard farming left, then I want us in front of that portal guardian.”

“Sure, boss,” the front-liner said. “Whatever you say.”

* * *

Sorin was done with Floor 3. At this point, he was four ranks over the rest of his team, and while that gap was only going to widen, all of them would grow faster once they reached Floor 4. The fact that it wasn’t a hot, sand-filled desert also made the change of scenery desirable.

Before he could leave, however, he needed to do a few things. First, he had to scout out the portal guardian’s arena to make sure it wasn’t under Hellion surveillance. Then he had to collect the rest of his team and ensure that they were ready for the confrontation, though even if they weren’t, he’d just carry them through it, and finally, he needed to resupply before they moved on to Floor 4.

Not having safe access to his liminal space anymore was an issue, and if he didn’t make it back to Floor 0 to pick up his dead drop in the next few days, Bradford would likely figure that Sorin was dead. The problem was that he couldn’t assume his exit on Floor 0 was safe. Samael could have—and almost certainly had—poked around the pathway, learning where each and every seven-tower sign was placed.

Sorin was confident he could take on a full climbing team of rank 10s now that he was rank 7 himself, but he couldn’t be sure that it would be just rank 10s waiting for him on the other side. Logically, it would probably be nobody, or at least nobody strong. Climbers that powerful had better things to do than sit in an empty building waiting to see if he’d show up someday.

At some point, he’d have to take the risk. For the moment, he was already chancing discovery at the portal hub, so buying some more food probably wouldn’t make things any worse. They had enough for another week already, but it didn’t seem like enough for an extended climb anymore. I’ve got a few danirs left. Might as well use them up.

“That was a… fun… ride,” Lorvaine said as they slowed to a stop at the edge of the portal hub.

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“Very much so,” Sorin agreed. “Much more relaxing than the trip out.”

“Are you going to be passing through here again?”

“One more time with the rest of my team to kill the portal guardian, then it’s off to Floor 4.”

Lorvaine hummed for a moment, then said, “I’ve been getting sick of this floor anyway. Might be time for me to move on soon, too. Maybe I’ll see you at the next hub.”

“I’d like that,” Sorin said with a small smile. He was surprised to find that he meant it. It was fun bantering with her, and even if he wasn’t willing to act on it, the flirting was fun, too.

“Well, of course you would. Who wouldn’t want to spend some time with me? I’m amazing,” Lorvaine told him in a fake snooty voice. “But you’d better have a bigger bag of money next time! I’m not getting swindled again.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said seriously.

“See that you do.”

They parted ways, with Lorvaine heading for the portal gleaming red on an overlook over the hub and Sorin finding a vendor to sell him some jerked meat and a handful of dried fruit. It was enough for a few days, but it hardly looked appetizing. Better than nothing, he thought to himself with a sigh.

He added them to his bag, right next to a set of basilisk fangs, a jar of liquid sand, and a small pouch of the glittering dusty sand that had filled the air. Sorin had no idea where he was going to find a craftsman to work with the materials, but he was sure whatever they ended up getting turned into would be a powerful piece of equipment.

He made his way through the portal hub and up the trail leading to the top of the mountain. It wasn’t particularly difficult to climb, but there were a few spots where getting ambushed would be inconvenient at best, fatal at worst. He also wasn’t sure how Nemari, the physically weakest person in the group, was going to handle the rigors of the trek. She wasn’t in bad shape by any means, but everyone else outmuscled her by a lot.

Sorin crawled all over the mountain for the next few hours, checking it out every which way he could think of. Blind Sense and Earth Warder did all of the hard work, and he found himself tempted to pour some of his spare anima into both of them simply to try to increase the range.

Eventually, he was forced to concede that he couldn’t find any trace of hidden watchers. The portal guardian itself was nestled in a cleft in the side of the mountain, meaning there were only so many spaces on the whole floor that could even see into it. Of course, anyone could watch the trail leading up, but if there were any Hellions already waiting like the group back on Floor 2, they’d hidden themselves too well for Sorin to find.

Now I just have to hope that this little scouting trip didn’t draw undue attention. I’ll get the team back here and straight through this portal, hopefully before anyone realizes we’re here. If someone is watching the trail leading to the portal guardian, they’ll be too late to stop us by the time they catch up.

As usual, the plan had far too many unknowns, but he’d done his best to account for them. More and more, he was sure there were no Black Hellions on Floor 3, but he couldn’t say with any certainty why that was. Samael had to know the truth just from looking at Sorin’s liminal path.

His thoughts chased each other in circles the whole run back, but he simply didn’t have enough concrete information, something they’d been planning on changing prior to finding out that Sorin couldn’t safely use Liminal Gateway anymore. Samael had made sure he knew that, which was a stupid move from a tactical perspective, but only if Sorin assumed the Black Hellion still wanted to capture him.

The only other option was that Samael was genuinely trying to help him, which made basically no sense at all. The other climber had been extremely clear about his intentions, that Sorin would work for him willingly or otherwise. It was hard to enforce ‘or otherwise’ if they couldn’t find him, so Sorin couldn’t see how the goal had changed.

He still hadn’t arrived at any real answers by the time he found the rest of his team, or rather, by the time they returned to camp and found him waiting there. They shuffled in single file, Rue in the front and Odric in the back, with Nemari cradling an arm riddled with puncture wounds that were slowly oozing blood. Someone had tried to wrap a bandage around it, but they’d done a poor job tying it off.

“What happened?” Sorin asked. Odric should have been able to easily heal that.

“Burnt through too much anima fighting and didn’t have enough for the healing,” Odric explained glumly.

“I wouldn’t need healing if I’d done a better job sniping the outliers,” Nemari added.

“Some sort of beetle with an aggression issue and too many spikes on its shell,” Rue said. “They came right up out of the sand, caved it out from under Nemari, and she fried almost all of them in a matter of seconds. But then more swarms started popping out all over, too many to keep up with, and she wasn’t back on her feet before they got to her.”

“Ah. And neither of you were bitten?”

Sorin knew they hadn’t been. He was reasonably certain he knew why, too. They had defensive soulprints that probably protected them from the pincers and thimble-sized horns of small bugs. It might be uncomfortable, but Rue could literally lie down on top of one of their nests and let them crawl all over her without taking any serious injuries.

“We’re fine,” Odric said. “I just need another half an hour or so to fix Nemari’s arm.”

Sorin free cast Minor Restoration on Nemari, causing her to jump in surprise as the wounds started to close. “I’ve got it,” he said.

“Uh… Thanks,” Nemari told him. “You got a healing soulprint while you were gone.”

Technically, he did have one now, but he didn’t see much reason to tell them that. He wasn’t even really part of their team at this point, just a climber stuck in the same shitty situation. “Free casted it,” he said by way of explanation. “Listen, I can’t find any trace of the Black Hellions at the portal guardian. I think we should rush it tonight and slip through to Floor 4 while we have the opening.”

“It would be nice to get out of the desert,” Rue muttered while Odric nodded along.

“We’re not even close to maxed out,” Nemari said. “A little over halfway, and we have basically no new soulprints. I’m sure you’d be fine, but the step up in difficulty going up a floor could kill us, especially since you’re not fighting with us anymore.”

“About that. The best course of action for you is probably to slip back down to Floor 2. You can forage easier there, farm anima in relative safety, and maybe get some actually useful soulprints that we didn’t have time to collect on our first pass through.”

“And what will you be doing?” Rue said, clearly not pleased with the plan.

“I want this ended as much as you do. I’ll be pushing for rank 20, then I’ll start dismantling the Black Hellions piece by piece. Sooner or later, Samael will show up, and then I’ll take care of him, too.”