The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 28

Dawn was less the sun rising and more the darkness of the sky fading to a dull, dreary gray, one that threatened the kind of cold, relentless, miserable rain that drove even the most veteran climbers to seek real shelter. Unfortunately, the best they could manage was to huddle under the boughs of trees, and none of them were under the illusion that they’d stay dry that way.

“I think you’re right,” Rue said once everyone was awake. “This floor is somehow worse than the last one.”

When Sorin just grunted in reply, Rue put down the jerky and dried apple she’d claimed for her breakfast and peered closely at him. “You alright there? Your aura’s a bit less frosty than usual.”

“Bad dreams,” he muttered, as much of an explanation as he wanted to give.

“You too, huh? I had a dream about giant squids that swam through the rain. What was yours?”

Sorin gave her a blank stare. “Not… that.”

“Let’s just hope it’s only a dream. It’s definitely going to rain sometime today.”

“And that means certain monsters that normally stay in the water will come out to hunt,” Yoru announced, adding himself to the conversation. “There’s no getting away from the lakes, rivers, marshes, swamps, and pretty much every other body of water we have a word for on Floor 4.”

Much like Floor 3, the new floor was more about the environmental challenge than it was about the monsters. That wasn’t to say the monsters were missing or that they were weak, just that the average climber was going to struggle more over the terrain and the weather than they were at killing massive amphibians or man-eating fish.

“Nothing for it but to keep moving forward,” Sorin said. “The sooner we get to the hub, the better.”

As predicted, the rain started about an hour after they broke camp. At first, it was just an annoyance, a reason to pull down the hood of their cloaks and ignore the billowing gusts of wind that drove water up from under the hems. Gradually, it got heavier, and soon they were all soaked through. Even Nemari was drenched, though Water Bond gave her far better protection than anyone else had.

Then the first of the monsters appeared. They didn’t see it right away, but it made its presence known by the distinctive warble of its cry. Everyone flinched at that, and Yoru immediately started swearing under his breath.

“There’s no escaping with this rain,” Sorin said. “They’ll chase us until we’re dead or they are.”

A blade of force sliced through the rain, striking the warbler frog just as it stepped into view from behind some brush near a stream. Sorin made sure to put enough extra anima into it that it cut completely through the monster, killing it in an explosion of blood and slimy flesh.

“Maybe we got lucky and it’s just a scout,” Nemari said.

“It’s a scout,” Yoru agreed, “but I don’t think we got lucky.”

Sorin could sense shapes at the edge of Blind Sense, their outlines muddled by the falling rain and sheer distance. They were only a few dozen feet behind the one he’d just killed, and he had no doubt they knew what he’d done. But they weren’t stupid, not by monster standards.

More and more of them were gathering, and as soon as they had enough for their hypnotic song to be effective, they’d charge the group en masse. There were really only two solutions: run away or run toward the frogs. In Sorin’s mind, running away wasn’t really an option.

“Nemari, Yoru, we’re on extermination duty. We’re charging in and thinning the numbers before they build too high. We’ll do it from range to lessen the impact when they start singing. Everyone else is with us, watching our backs. You’ll be our eyes to make sure we don’t get flanked.”

“We should run,” Yoru argued. “Let them chase us and we’ll pick off the front-runners.”

“What do we do when we hit the next river?” Sorin told him. “No, your way would leave us pinned there, with Nemari and me out of the fight trying to rush a bridge to get us some more room.”

“I’ve got Earth Spike, too,” Odric said.

Oh, right. I forgot I was supposed to help him merge that with Stone Skin. Too much going on right now.

“Been practicing with it?”

“Enough to hit a fat, ugly frog in the face, I’m sure.”

“Great. You’re part of the firing squad then. Just don’t waste too much anima on it. We might need you for other jobs later.”

“You know I’m going to be pretty useless in this rain, right?” Nemari asked.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Focus on water projectiles instead of fire. I’m sure you’ll kill a few.”

The plan decided, they advanced in a line. Nemari was on the outside edge on Sorin’s right, and Odric took the same spot to the left. Sorin and Yoru took the center. They hadn’t discussed builds in depth, but Sorin was positive Yoru had some sort of sensory enhancement soulprint, and Blind Sense was all he personally needed to hit the waist-high frog men in the rain.

Ice Blade would have been a much better ability to use in this situation, but since he didn’t have it anymore, and he wasn’t about to waste a ton of anima free casting it the whole fight, he’d just have to compensate with excellent aim.

The warblers noticed their prey advancing on them, of course. The hypnotic croak of their song started up immediately, spreading through their ranks to build up power. In an ironic reversal, the rain actually helped dampen the sound, at least enough that the initial wave didn’t hit that hard.

Nemari and Rue both missed a step, but they recovered on the next one and kept pace with the group. With only a hundred or so feet left between them and the leading edge of the disgusting little frogs, Sorin opened up.

A dozen force blades sliced through the rain, practically invisible in the wet gloom, and cut the leading edge of the warblers to pieces. That did nothing to deter the next set, of course. Warbler frogs didn’t know fear.

They were spindly little things to begin with—their arms and legs so thin that it was a wonder they could even support the rest of their body weight on them. They had bulbous eyes that never seemed to blink and overly large mouths that could easily open wide enough to fit a human head in them.

Fortunately, their power lay in their ability to psychically attack their victims, not in their physical might. Their rubbery skin did almost nothing to protect them, and the ones Sorin hit were either dead on impact or rapidly bleeding out. Either way, their contributions to the communal song were ended.

Spinning bolts of stone shot out to Sorin’s left. There was a noticeable difference between Yoru’s version and Odric’s, both in the size and speed. Yoru was also much faster at forming them and far more accurate, but Odric still managed to strike a few of the monsters.

It was Nemari who struggled the most, exactly as she’d predicted. Water Bond was a powerful hydrokinesis soulprint, but she hadn’t gotten much time to practice with it on Floor 3. It couldn’t create water, not at its current rank, and the desert was no place to find any. The needles she made flashed through the rain and even drew blood when they hit, but nothing more serious than that.

For the first few seconds, Sorin’s team had the fight all their way. They killed at least two dozen warbler frogs, and streams of anima trickled into their soul spaces to confirm it. The mind-rending sound of the monsters’ cry faltered, and the human climbers pressed deeper, encouraged by their success.

Then the second wave hit them. They’d charged through twenty or thirty frogs’ cumulative mental assault without slowing down, only to encounter a hundred more already singing in unison behind them.

Rue went down immediately, with Odric not far behind. Yoru staggered, though Vendis surprisingly maintained enough composure to rush forward and keep his master upright. The man apparently had a steel core hidden beneath his soft, unobtrusive nature. Well, that or his devotion to Yoru is just that strong.

It was Nemari who pushed through the mental compulsion weighing on their minds, somehow. Her shoulders slumped and her steps slowed, but she never stopped firing off stinging bolts of water. If anything, her accuracy grew greater, and she started focusing on a single monster until she’d brought it down with a whole salvo of needles.

Yoru also recovered his wits after a few moments and resumed his attack, but Sorin could feel despair radiating off him. The man fully believed they were about to die—admittedly not an unlikely proposition as far as he knew when considering the sheer number of monsters heading for them—but rather than submit, he’d decided to sell his life as dearly as possible.

The little mutant frogs grew visibly excited at the sight of their prey succumbing to the sound of their croaking song, so much so that some of them started waving their sharpened sticks and clubs in the air. Sorin’s eyes narrowed at their presumption, and he drew his sword.

Shrugging off a hundred warbler frogs’ combined assault on his mind through nothing but grit and willpower was not something he wanted to try. It was technically possible. He might even be able to pull it off as long as he kept himself far enough back from the main host, especially with the rain helping cut down the volume. But he didn’t see a reason to bother, not when he had a better way.

Clarity of Mind was, at S-rank, still far beyond his ability to replicate, but he had a better idea for this fight. Deafen was a simple weak curse soulprint, one that Sorin normally had no use for. Those kinds of attacks could be ineffectual for a whole host of reasons, not in the least of which was the target’s innate ability to resist the effect.

Used on himself, however, it was the perfect counter to a psychic attack that was triggered by hearing the monsters’ chorus. Sorin cast it on himself the moment he felt the intrusive thoughts growing strong enough to even mildly threaten his concentration, and when the wave of magic broke over the rest of his team, he ignored it like it wasn’t even there.

One Speed Burst later, he was in the middle of the warbler frogs, hacking into them with brutality and speed. Sickly green blood splattered across his body, making his nose curl at the acid sting of the smell, and little wisps of smoke roise from his bare skin where it landed on his arms. The last group of warbler frogs he’d encountered hadn’t had that trait, but he supposed it was inevitable they’d grow stronger as he went up to higher floors.

Sorin was a whirlwind of death crossing a rain-soaked field. The monsters swarmed around him, stabbing at him and sometimes connecting through the virtue of sheer mass of numbers. Iron Bulwark fended off their weak strikes, and another fell to his blade with every swing. Still, they stayed. Still, they fought.

And then it was over. The trickle of anima cut off, and Blind Sense told him there wasn’t a single warbler frog left in front of him. The rain poured down unabated, the cold water washing away the coating of acidic blood before it could finish burning through his clothes, and Sorin released the curse keeping him from hearing the world around him.

“That went better than last time,” he remarked to no one in particular. Though he would have preferred to take the monsters out in waves, with his team’s magic cutting them down as they came, he wasn’t particularly surprised it had come to this. Their original plan had always been a long shot, and it said something about his team’s faith in him that they’d gone along without hesitation.

“Okay, what the hell was that?” Yoru demanded as he stomped across the field.