The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 34

Rue frantically jerked her arm back just in time to dodge the voidling’s grasping, tentacle-like fingers. She’d been trying to slice that hand off, but its limb speared forward at the last instant, doubling in length and completely outclassing her sword’s reach.

The icy numbness in her fingers gave way to a peculiar burning as her flesh passed within an inch of the voidling. Grimacing, she spun away to give herself a bit of distance and to line up her other blade. It slashed through void-stuff as easily as air, but the voidling didn’t seem to notice. It never did. It just rolled over its own body, sprouting new limbs when needed, and chased her across the soggy ground.

The pursuit lasted at most three seconds before someone else distracted it, and the pattern continued. Rue reversed her flight and chased after the voidling while Vendis scrambled to stay out of its reach. They’d been holding in this way for several minutes now, and the entity was already down to half the size it had started at.

Perhaps inevitably, somebody had to screw up. Rue had been waiting for it, and when Nemari missed her dodge, she was ready to intervene. What she wasn’t expecting was high-pitched, pain-filled screaming as the voidling slapped onto the mage’s chest. Rushing forward, Rue worked her sword as quickly and carefully as she could to cut Nemari free.

The voidling made no effort to resist, which would have made things easier if Nemari herself hadn’t been thrashing around like someone had set her on fire. Rue had to rely on Aura Sense to tell where Nemari ended, which wasn’t all that precise and was further complicated by the voidling seemingly devouring Nemari’s aura, but she figured a few cuts were better than whatever was happening right now.

Blades working independently, Rue skimmed the steel across Nemari’s chest and stomach, peeling the voidling back and leaving only a thin, oily layer behind. The creature turned on Rue, of course, and tried to latch onto her body the instant it had been pried free, but its behavior was predictable by now, and she got out of the way of its full-body tackle before it could make contact.

The screaming didn’t stop, but Rue blocked it out. Without Nemari to help, and with Odric and Vendis both scrambling to pour healing magic into her, Rue was on her own for keeping the voidling’s attention. It’s fine. I can do this. It’s just like dodging any other monster.

That wasn’t strictly true, but she wasn’t going to sweat the details until after she’d killed the damn thing. Its loss of stature had done absolutely nothing to curb its aggression, and it was all she could do to keep ahead of it now.

Opportunities to counter were rare, but Rue picked at the voidling whenever she felt safe getting a hit in. The whole time, her skin ached like she had a bad sunburn, but she pushed through the pain to keep fighting. Eventually, mercifully, what little remained of the entity fell apart into ribbons of darkness. Then, even those seemed to fold in on themselves until there was nothing left.

That was when she realized that everything had gone quiet. The only sound left was a quiet grinding, one she didn’t recognize at first, but she quickly traced back to Sorin’s symbol. He stood next to it, his face set in stone, as the rock beside him crumbled into sand. Yoru was kneeling next to Vendis, who was helping Odric work on Nemari.

Rue made her way over to him and nodded down at the disintegrating rock. “You always said they were dangerous.”

“The first one I ever found shat a voidling out on my head,” he said, his voice tight. “Rue, I’m sorry I—”

“What? That you weren’t here to save us? We’re climbers, too. We’re fine.”

“Nemari doesn’t look fine.”

“She’s had worse.”

He shook his head. “Soulspace damage like this takes time to heal. There’s nothing any of you can do but grit your teeth and deal with the pain over the next few weeks. Those healing spells they’re pouring into her are failing because they can’t find anything wrong with her body. Damn it, I knew this was a risk. I got too impatient and didn’t think things through.”

“Everyone’s still alive,” Rue said. “Maybe mistakes were made, but we can recover from this one.”

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t sound convinced. He just sounded pissed off and, for some reason, bitter. He glared out across the small lake that was blocking their progress, a scowl on his face. After a few moments, his features softened, and he sighed. “Good job with that voidling, though. I caught the last thirty seconds or so. You did it right. How’re your swords doing?”

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“I don’t know yet. Had other things on my mind,” she said. “I’ll check them later. And thanks.”

Voidlings ate anima, and that included the enchantments in gear. A plain steel sword would have been unaffected by hacking apart such a creature, but both her weapons were enchanted for speed and reduced weight. She’d noticed them feeling heavier by the end of the fight but couldn’t say if that was because the magic had frayed or just because her arms were tired.

Equipment didn’t have auras like people did, which meant she didn’t have a good way to confirm her weapons were still in fighting condition. Sorin might be able to tell—he always seemed to be able to read deeper into things than he had any right to be able to—but she decided to wait until things had settled to ask.

“I think it was using magic to create the symbol that drew the voidling,” he said finally. “The anima was a beacon to it.”

“Ah. That’s… bad,” she said.

“Yeah. I made one with the same soulprint back on Floor 3. Now I’m wondering what kind of problem I might have left behind. I’m going to have to go check on it.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong about the cause,” she said with a small, forced laugh.

“Let’s hope,” he agreed.

* * *

Sorin got the story out of them once they’d done what they could for Nemari. He examined them as best he could, but soulspace damage was a subtle thing from the outside. They’d have to look within to truly understand how much anima the battle had cost them. From what Sorin could tell, they’d gotten extremely lucky to come away relatively unscathed.

Nemari had gotten the worst of it, as always seemed to be her luck. She was in her soulspace at the moment, and he expected her report to be something like a ten percent loss in capabilities across the board. The raw damage to her soulspace would take a week or two to fully heal at best, and using any sort of magic or abilities until then was going to hurt like hell.

While she did that, Sorin pulled Odric aside and said, “I’ve heard from Rue about the fight. We’ve got to get you a real weapon.”

“I’m not very good with weapons,” Odric said. “But… yes, I think it’s time I started carrying one.”

“A bladed weapon,” Sorin told him, “and we’re going to drill on how to use it. I know you wanted a bare-handed build, and that’s fine most of the time, but there are enemies you can’t touch. A side weapon as backup is a reasonable precaution.”

Odric nodded unhappily. He’d always contributed the least to the fights, being content to watch the others work and quick to jump in if someone got hurt, but a healer on Sorin’s team needed to be more proactive. He thought he’d been getting through to the big man, and indeed, Odric had been willingly leaping into melee to mix it up with monsters since he’d acquired Stone Skin, but he’d ‘lost’ that cudgel Sorin had given him as quickly as possible.

It's my fault. I should have stayed on top of him instead of letting him slack. We had plenty of options to find a weapon for him, too, and we let Yoru’s people cart them all off. First thing when we get to the next portal hub, we’re fixing this.

That didn’t answer the question of how exactly they were getting there, however. His initial idea to use Liminal Gateway to make a shortcut for the team probably wasn’t going to fly after the seven-tower sign had attracted another voidling, especially since he still couldn’t be sure why it had happened in the first place.

The simple and obvious answer was to just keep walking. Eventually, they’d find a way across, and if they didn’t, he’d come up with another solution. It wouldn’t be as easy or as elegant as using Liminal Gateway, but they weren’t out of options.

“Why do you look so guilty?” Yoru asked, drawing Sorin from his thoughts.

With a shake of his head, he gestured around himself. “My fault the voidling showed up. They handled it, but it could have been a disaster.”

“Sure, you could look at it that way. But we are climbers, you know.”

“Rue told me the exact same thing,” Sorin said.

“Maybe you should listen to her, then. But enough about that. You’ve convinced me that something is definitely going on with Samael. We all knew that, but nobody had a good explanation. Yours is more likely than anything else I’ve heard, and there’s enough weirdness hanging around you that I’m willing to accept your answer as true for now. We need to get back down to Floor 0 and talk to my father.”

“Going to be somewhat difficult at the moment.”

“Less than you think,” Yoru said. “The easiest way would be to use your liminal space, but failing that, we might have to split into two teams.”

“I’m not in love with leaving them on their own. They weren’t ready for this floor, and they’re trusting me to make up for the lack of preparation. I pushed for us to advance quickly. It’s my responsibility to at least get them to the portal hub so they can go back down to Floor 2 or 3 if they want.”

Yoru nodded along with all of that. “I agree. Taking them through liminal space is the better option.”

“Except for the voidling part,” Sorin said.

“You said you know why it happened, though.”

“I said that I think I know why. It’s not exactly something you test out.”

“Unless you’ve got a way to pull a few more Water Walking soulprints out of thin air, I don’t think we have a ton of good alternatives,” Yoru said. “Climbing is a risky activity. Make a new sign. Wait half an hour to see if it bleeds the void, and if not, go from there.”

“We’ll need to talk to the others first.”

“If you want. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Straight to the portal hub, huh? I could probably get there in half a day on my own.”

“We could survive that without your help,” Yoru said.

Nemari’s eyes opened, and she took a shuddering breath. Odric leaned in to help her back to her feet and said something too softly for Sorin to pick up. Looks like she’s done surveying the damage. Let’s go see how bad things are and decide the next move.

“How are you feeling?” Sorin asked.

“Like hell,” she said. “But nothing’s broke. I just need some time and a boatload of monsters to burn.”

“About that. Let’s discuss how we’re getting off this floor. Yoru has an idea. It’s risky, but if it works, it’s expedient.”