The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 24

Sorin dragged the unconscious brigand back down the trail by his foot. He’d caught the very tail end of the fight from about a thousand feet away and rushed forward to intercede, only for Rue to take down the enemy team’s anchor, then finish off the mage. Sorin had made his way down the winding trail just in time to catch the fleeing scout.

“So, I know why I’ve got blood all over me, but what’s your excuse?” Rue asked.

“Hmm? Oh, remember how I said there was nobody up there the other day? Well, that changed. I’ll tell you in a bit.”

They rounded the corner together and spotted the climber decked out in a full suit of armor sprawled out unconscious with his face covered in blood. If he’d ever had a helmet, it was gone now. Odric sat on his chest, breathing heavily and working on removing one of several daggers stuck in Nemari.

Beyond them, Sorin was unsurprised to see four more bodies. Two of them were utterly still—dead—but the other two were still breathing. He immediately recognized them as Vendis and Yoru. Ah! That’s who those two guys I saw the other day were. I knew they looked familiar; they were just too far off to make out the details.

“Oh, now you show up,” Nemari said, hissing in pain as Odric pulled another throwing knife out of her. “Why are you covered in blood?”

“Why do you think?” Sorin asked dryly. “I can assure you that none of it is mine. Let’s get the prisoners secured and make sure anyone we want to still be breathing in an hour stays that way, then we can discuss it.”

Sorin dumped the climber he’d been dragging over by the rest of his group, walked down the trail a bit, and stopped in front of Vendis. “Already conscious? Good. That’ll make this a bit easier.”

He free cast a minor restoration into the healer, which wasn’t nearly enough to fix the damage to the gut wound on its own, but it did a lot to bring Vendis back to his senses. A second cast had the man’s eyes open and with enough agency to finish healing himself.

“You think you can take over from here?” Sorin asked. “Enough for you and your boss?”

“I… Yes, I think so,” Vendis said. “It would seem we are in your debt.”

“We’ll see,” Sorin murmured. “Yoru might think differently when he wakes up.”

He’d burned through a lot of his reserves already, and while healing wasn’t the most intensive use of anima he could think of, he really needed some time to recuperate. Leaving Vendis to his work, even if Sorin could have done it faster and better, was an acceptable compromise to him.

He did take a minute to help Odric work on his own team, which mostly meant fixing up Rue. She probably didn’t need much help since she had her own copy of Minor Regeneration and hadn’t taken any deep wounds, but they were going to be fighting a portal guardian in the next half an hour, so it didn’t hurt to make sure she was in top condition.

“Now, as for these two… I suppose the first thing we’ll want to do is strip them down and determine what, if any, of their gear we want to keep,” Sorin said. “You three will have first dibs, of course. This was your fight, not mine.”

It didn’t take them long to make a pile, and Odric produced a length of rope to tie up the two enemy climbers who were still breathing. Sorin doubted it would hold them, but then, he fully planned on killing the pair once he got some answers out of them. He had no tolerance for climbers who attacked other climbers.

Right, that’s why you gave the ones at the arena a chance to prove their innocence before jumping them. Oh wait, you didn’t.

In his defense, they were all rank 10 or higher. There was absolutely no reason for them to be lurking around the portal guardian’s arena. Sorin hadn’t been careful about hiding his trips to the portal hub, and he’d fully expected word to get back to the Black Hellions that he was around. He probably still could have won even if he’d tried talking first, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’ll be right back,” he said once he was sure the two climbers were secured, however temporary that might turn out to be.

“Wait, where are you going?” Rue asked.

“I left some stuff up at the top of the trail when I spotted you guys fighting. I want to go grab it before the tower gets any funny ideas.”

Sorin chained Speed Bursts back up to the top, where he’d dropped three bags full of looted supplies and gear. The weight wasn’t too bad, but the size made it all a bit awkward to carry. It was tempting to haul them down one at a time, or even two and then one, but he managed it by slinging one over his shoulders and carrying another on each arm. It made the trip back down a bit dangerous, of course.

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When he returned, Yoru and Vendis were back on their feet and helping the team pick through the spoils. Rue was the first to notice Sorin, and her eyes bulged when she saw what he was carrying. “Holy crap! Where did that all come from?”

“Obviously he got attacked by a few climbers at the top,” Nemari said, though the way she was eyeing the bags, Sorin could see her doing the math in her head. “Uh, maybe more than a few.”

“Sixteen, spread across three groups,” he said. “That’s why it took me so long to get back.”

“What are you talking about?” Yoru asked weakly. “Because it sounds like you’re saying you confronted three groups of climbers, all of whom must be at least rank 3 by virtue of being on this floor, and somehow won. That would be impossible.”

Rue snorted. “I bet they weren’t rank 3, were they?”

“No,” Sorin said. “Mostly rank 10 to 13, except for one guy at rank 15.”

Yoru looked around at the team, saw nobody was arguing, and just rolled his eyes. Sorin could practically see the man deciding in real time that it wasn’t his problem, that he already had enough to deal with.

“Alright, let’s see what loot we’ve got here while we wait for those two idiots to wake up,” Sorin said.

He picked up a headband. “Hmm… Water Bolt echoing circlet, slightly modified for the material. Not a hard soulprint to pick up, though not particularly useful at your stage of development. Unless…”

“I think I might be able to use it with Water Bond, even though it’s not exactly the same soulprint,” Nemari said.

Sorin handed it to her, then picked up a brace of throwing knives. “Nothing special here. Just steel knives. Good balance. Well-crafted or maybe tower-forged. Rue? Any interest in learning to throw knives? You could use a ranged option.”

“Not so much,” Rue said. “I’d rather work on upgrading Reach.”

“Probably not going to get that past E-rank for at least another few floors,” Sorin told her. “You’d need rank 6 or 7 without upgrading or adding any new soulprints just to make room for it.”

“True, I suppose. I guess it can’t hurt to keep them for now. Worst case, I don’t end up using them, right?”

No one wanted the set of armor, unsurprisingly. Odric and Rue were standing at the vanguard these days, and neither of them could fit it. They did keep a ring they acquired from the same climber, though, one that promised a bit of relief from the heat.

“Where was this a week and a half ago?” Rue muttered darkly.

The real prize was probably the sword, at least in terms of sheer value. It wasn’t suited for either Sorin or Rue, but it was powerfully enchanted to be more durable and flexible, and unless Sorin very much missed his guess, it was a masterwork of craftsmanship.

“It’d be a shame to just sell it,” Nemari said. “I’ll take it. I might never be amazing with it, but I needed a backup weapon anyway, right?”

There were some other odds and ends, including a cloak that boasted an enchantment to make sleeping in it more comfortable, a pair of boots that provided sure-footedness on slick surfaces, a belt enchanted to lighten the loads of any pouches hung from it, and a smooth river stone that the team had likely been using to keep their water skins full.

“That’s actually mine,” Yoru said. “I loaned it to their mage since he was using a water soulprint build. I’d like it back.”

“Sure,” Sorin told him with a shrug. “Not like we’re going to need that on Floor 4, right?”

The Black Hellions, as it turned out, were not well-equipped, at least not considering their ranks. Samael apparently valued soulprints over gear, since other than a variety of magic weapons and a few pieces of armor—those took up most of the space in the bags—pickings were slim.

Nemari got a new wand, this one more general use than her old firebolt-storing piece. Odric took a staff made of white alder heartwood, which would make any healing spells he cast through it more efficient and slightly boost their range. He was beyond needing to touch people to heal them now, but the staff would also function as a limb to channel that, if he ever needed it to.

“I think the rest of this could be sold,” Sorin said once they were done picking through it.

“That’ll be a problem,” Rue commented.

“Yeah. We’re getting to the point of having a massive stock pile. We need to find a way to move it soon. Might be worth taking a trip back down to the portal hub just to unload everything. We’d only get a fraction of what it’s all worth, but that’s better than letting the tower claim it.”

“Perhaps I might be of help there,” Yoru said, bringing the conversation to a brief halt.

“How so?” Sorin asked.

“None of these pieces are bad. They’re just not what you need. You four saved my life here, much as it galls me to admit that my own mercenaries tried to kill me. I could buy your stock from you. Let’s say fifteen hundred danirs for everything you don’t want?”

It was less than they’d get if they took their time selling pieces individually, but Sorin valued time more than money right now. Besides, once he included the loss from Bradford’s cut as their fence, it was probably close to a wash anyway. “That could be acceptable. Are you sure you can get all of this back home, though? And do you even have that much money on you?”

“Well, no,” Yoru admitted. “I’d need an hour or so to fetch some porters and your fee.”

“It’s not a bad solution,” Nemari mused. “And we could use the time to rest before we kill the portal guardian.”

“You’re still going to try it tonight?” Yoru asked, his mouth agape. “After… After all of everything?”

“No reason not to,” Sorin told him. “We’re healed up. Anima will be back by then.”

“But the mental toll of battle, of killing so many… men…” Yoru trailed off, once again staring at Sorin’s blood-stained clothes.

“That reminds me, we need to have a chat with these two,” Sorin said, casting a meaningful glance at the climbers they’d tied up. “They’re both already awake and pretending not to be.”

“I’d like to keep them alive, if it’s all the same to you,” Yoru said, rising to his feet. “Betrayers and oath breakers. I assure you that once I get them back to the Telpike estate, they’ll wish they’d fallen in battle.”

“Long as you’ve got a way to keep them under control, I guess I don’t see a problem with that,” Sorin said. “But first, why did they attack us to begin with?”

“For the bounty, of course,” Yoru said. “Anyone here could have told you that.”

“We have a bounty on us?” Sorin asked. “Huh, I guess that makes sense. Still kind of surprising,. Do you know how they planned to collect once they beat us?”

Yoru frowned, then shook his head. “I don’t much concern myself with bounty hunting.”

“I guess they’ve got some questions to answer then,” Sorin said, rising to his feet and drawing his sword as he approached the two men.