The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 21

Sorin didn’t actually have a schedule, which was a good thing, because the rest of his team was dead on their feet from a hard day’s climbing. None of them were going anywhere for at least a few hours, and once they were ready to start walking, it would be a relatively slow process.

Truth be told, I could use a bit of a break myself. I’ve been going hard basically since the moment I got here. Taking eight hours to just breathe and recover won’t kill me.

While the others started getting cleaned up and making food, Sorin tucked himself into a corner and took a moment to dive into his soulspace. He’d made a lot of rapid changes without thoroughly going over everything, though he was confident that he’d done the work properly. What really interested him was his growth to rank 7.

The basilisk not being quite enough anima to push him there had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He’d been so intent on the fight itself that it had completely slipped his mind that he’d been planning to use the rank up to experiment. Gaining the rank from the weaker elementals after had given him some much-needed mental clarity.

And he was pleased to see he’d been exactly right. It was possible to guide the growth of the shape of his soulspace. This time, instead of the circle growing wider, it had turned slightly oblong. He’d chosen a direction based on the thin sliver of mosaic he could make out, which showed what looked like the edge of the sword the tower had awarded him in the Floor 2 Antechamber.

Now, the mosaic had expanded another two feet in that direction and clearly showed the sword. There was no mistaking it, but more interesting to him was what else was in this particular section. Writhing tendrils of void lashed through the image, their source still hidden beyond the edges of Sorin’s soulspace, but they’d been severed cleanly where the sword was depicted.

Any blade made of good steel could do the same. It was the wielder who mattered. Only soulprints that enhanced the climber made a difference in a fight against a voidling, and enchanted weapons merely saw their magic unravel and vanish into the void if they were used. That had actually been one of Sorin’s initial fears over the weapon, but he hadn’t been able to find any magic in it.

Maybe it’s too soon to make assumptions, but from what I can see, it almost seems like there’s a connection between this sword, which represents my original tower in some way, and cutting through the void. Could be metaphorical, like it serves as some kind of key to bridge the gap between towers.

Or it could be literal. Did the tower give me a weapon specifically designed to fight the void? That should be impossible, but then again, the impossible has been happening a lot since I got here.

Whatever the mosaic was unveiling, he needed a few more ranks to see the whole picture. But it was still nice to confirm that he wouldn’t be waiting until rank 25 or 30 and then unveiling everything all at once. The other sections were also slowly expanding despite his best efforts to push growth in a single direction, so he estimated he’d probably unveil half of them by rank 20, then the other half in rapid succession over the next few ranks.

Having assured himself that everything looked fine, Sorin opened his eyes to find a small bowl of unidentified meat with some diced vegetables in front of him. It was all very purple, which was not at all a color he was used to seeing in his food.

Rue nudged Odric when Sorin started moving, and the healer looked over at him. “Running low on meat, so we brought back a giant scorpion to grill over an open fire,” he explained. “I checked it for poisons, so it should be safe to eat.”

Considering everyone else was already halfway through their meal, Sorin sure hoped it was. “And the vegetables? I’m not even sure what these are.”

They were in a desert. Nothing grew here but cacti, and none of those were purple. Then again, he hadn’t cracked one open to get a look at the inside, so perhaps that was what it was. Again, it hardly looked edible.

“We’re not sure. The insects built their nests by them and were eating the stalks. After we wiped them out, I dug up the tubers and cleaned them off,” Odric said. “They’re a little bland, but we’re not exactly in a position to be choosy, right?”

No one directly blamed Sorin, but the truth was that it was his fault. He was the one who’d been in charge of resupplying them, and while he’d found some food at the portal hub, it wasn’t exactly fine cuisine, nor was it present in quantities to support a floor full of hungry climbers. There was no reason for it to be, not when any normal person could just walk through the portal and get their meals elsewhere.

Sorin couldn’t complain about it too much. The hub was sparsely populated precisely because of the inhospitable environment, which was probably the biggest reason he’d passed through it twice without being identified and attacked. It also explained in part why Floor 2’s hub was so big. It likely had a lot of spillover from people climbing Floor 3 who wanted to retreat somewhere more temperate.

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“Our whole plan is kind of falling apart, isn’t it?” Sorin said with a sigh. “But give me another few weeks. Once I’ve got a few stealth soulprints in the build, I’m hopeful that I can use Liminal Gateway again without too much risk. In the meantime, we’ll get you all to rank 4 and set up somewhere you’ll be able to work.”

Transporting them to Floor 2 via Liminal Gateway was also a risk, but Sorin judged it was a lot less likely anyone was watching all the random places he’d linked on that floor than the sole access to Floor 0 he had left. If they were, Sorin could only hope it wasn’t anybody strong or competent. He wasn’t close to ready to go after Samael yet, but he was confident in his ability to pick off anyone below rank 10, even if they came at him in full teams.

“Plans are made for changing,” Nemari said. “God knows my life isn’t going the way I thought it would.”

“Is anyone’s?” Rue asked.

They were all silent for a second, then Odric said, “This is pretty much what I expected, other than the whole ‘being afraid to return to any sort of civilization’ part.”

“Yeah, but that part’s kind of big.”

Sorin faded out of the conversation to pick at the meal. It wasn’t inedible, but he’d be hard pressed to find something nice to say about it. He ate it anyway. Anima could only take him so far. At the end of the day, he still needed calories and nutrients.

He took the first half of the watch that night, letting all of them get some much-needed rest. When Odric woke up to cover the remaining few hours, Sorin got a few hours of light dozing in. It felt like it had been months since the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep, but that didn’t seem likely to change any time soon.

* * *

They set out two hours before dawn, when the air was still chill and the desert was cast in shadows. Sorin hadn’t realized just how much stuff they were carrying without the ability to hand it off to their fence, but the bags were both heavy and overstuffed. There were a few soulprints that he thought he might be able to get Lorvaine to give him a fair price for, but he wasn’t prepared to swear by it. Nor was he interested in an extended haggling session.

It just reinforced how untenable their position was in the long term. Sorin was doing fine, but he did feel some responsibility for the welfare of the other three. He wouldn’t go so far as to say it was his fault, but they’d definitely been caught up in a problem that had nothing to do with them.

“Swear to God, I think it’s somehow getting even hotter today than it was yesterday,” Rue said, not bothering to hide the dirty look she was directing at Sorin and Nemari. “No luck finding another Heat Resistance soulprint at the market, huh?”

“No, but I might be able to help you out there anyway,” Sorin said. He dropped back from his position at the front and dribbled a thin thread of anima into Still Winter. Cold rippled out of him for a few feet in every direction, catching the rest of the team in the radius.

“You mean you could do this the whole time, and you didn’t tell us?” Rue demanded.

“No, not until yesterday. I also can’t throw ice blades anymore, but I got a replacement for that.”

Sorin casually tossed out a burst of kinetic energy, near invisible in ripples of rising heat coming up off the sand. Rue’s own sensory soulprint let her track it anyway, and she let out a low whistle when it carved a gouge out of the ground.

“You’ve been busy. Rank 7 now? And some new soulprints.”

Nemari’s head whipped around. “You’re rank 7?! How?”

“The spider warrens had bigger, meaner monsters the farther down you go,” Sorin explained. “Killed an elementally-infused basilisk down at the bottom, plus some other stuff.”

Though she’d done her best to hide it, Sorin had noted a melancholy air around Nemari ever since her ordeal with her family. She kept fighting, and he’d had no reason to think she’d ever given it anything less than her best, but she didn’t have any hope left in her. Nemari was a woman who fully expected to die, and perhaps that was reasonable, all things considered.

But now, he saw a visible change come over her. It was so noticeable that Rue and Odric looked up at her, too. The renewal of hope, Sorin thought to himself. She’s starting to believe that I can actually beat Samael, if I can just keep ahead of him long enough. There’s an end coming to this.

“Alright, lay it out for us,” she said. “How do you see this all going down?”

Sorin didn’t have to think about it. “A day and a half, maybe two day’s walking. Honestly, it’d be better to reach the hub at night. Less scrutiny. We start up the mountain. I go ahead to double check there’s no one up there waiting for us. Slaughter the floor boss. Sorry you won’t get the experience of fighting it for real, but we’ve got bigger problems. We hop through the Antechamber portal to Floor 4.

“That’s the easy part. Next, I go scout the liminal path and make sure there’s no traps or ambushes waiting for us at one of my Floor 2 locations. Then I ferry you all one at a time, and we head off into the wilderness. You get set up some place where you can survive without a lot of hassle. Hang on for a few weeks, maybe a month or two. If things go right, I’ll hit rank 20 around then. I’ll take out the Hellions, come get you, and you can get back to living your life.”

“We’re farming anima to cap rank 4 while you go ahead,” Nemari said. “You’ll come get us to kill the Floor 4 portal guardian so we can continue to grow?”

“If I can and you want to, yes. Keep in mind that the more you outgrow Floor 2, the harder it’s going to be to keep growing.”

“Yes, but once we’re rank 5, we can just repeat the process again, maybe on Floor 4 this time. It’d be better to keep moving around anyway.”

“The real problem is going to be getting access to soulprints,” Rue said. “How long will it be until Sorin can reestablish our supply line to Floor 0?”

“Hopefully not more than a few weeks, but I’m not setting foot back down there until I’m rank 10 at minimum,” he said. “The higher, the better. I’d feel a lot more comfortable with a soulspace full of D-ranked soulprints and a nice C-rank as a keystone.”

Nemari nodded. “It’s still got some moving pieces to sort out, but I think we’ve got a good plan.”

They walked along, the mood much improved and with Sorin providing some much-needed relief from the sun. Occasionally, he’d glance back at the trail of damp sand they left in their wake and wonder if something was going to follow it to them. If it did, he’d simply take care of it. The danger was worth it in his eyes.

Just for a few hours, he could pretend it was like old times, climbing with people who were family to him. He’d have to wake up from the fantasy soon enough, but for now, he allowed himself to relax and enjoy the day.