The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 36

Logistically speaking, the crossing would have been much easier if he could have taken two passengers along, but since that wasn’t yet possible for Sorin, who went first and who went last were actually important questions to be answered. Whoever went first would be alone on the other side for however long it took to bring a second person over, and the same for whoever went last here.

It probably didn’t matter. At most, it’d be thirty seconds, and Sorin knew there were no monsters nearby. However, a lot could change in half a minute, and if there was something that could hide from Blind Sense and Aura Sense in the area, it would have a prime window to take a solo climber while Sorin was transporting someone else.

This was what climbing was like, most of the time: an endless series of paranoid preparations for possibilities that rarely came to pass, but when they did, he was glad he’d taken the time to think up countermeasures for them. It only took one mistake to die, and the tower provided an unlimited number of chances to screw up.

Yoru went first under the reasoning that, outside of Sorin himself, he was most likely to be able to survive by himself for a minute. Vendis insisted on going second since protecting the scion of the Telpike family was his responsibility, which left them with Odric, Nemari, and Rue to contend for the title of ‘most dangerous’ and thus most suitable to be the last to go.

It came down to a choice between Odric and Rue. Odric was, in Sorin’s opinion, the most durable of the group and more likely to survive by himself than anyone else—including Yoru, but he didn’t think it was worth the argument—if he was left alone, with the notable exception of if a voidling should attack. In that case, his money was on Rue.

“Just pick someone,” Nemari said, exasperated after he shared his reasoning. “It’s like two minutes, tops.”

“Easy for you to say, going in the very middle where it’s safest,” Rue muttered half under her breath, just loud enough to ensure that everyone heard her.

“Enough,” Sorin said. “Odric, you’re going last. If a voidling does show up, I recommend just running from it instead of engaging.”

“Fair plan,” the big healer said.

With the order fully decided, Sorin started ferrying them through liminal space one at a time. Yoru made the trip without comment, though Sorin could still feel him clench up as they entered the darkness and void roiled all around them. He just shook his head and let out a shaky breath on the other side though.

Wordlessly, Sorin went back and grabbed Vendis, who stared wide-eyed at the void surrounding them. He started to stay something but stopped when Sorin shook his head and pointed. Silently, they crossed the few steps and exited liminal space to find Yoru with a conjured spike of stone floating over his shoulder.

“Something down in the marsh,” he said by way of explanation. “I’m not sure if it’ll climb up here, or even if it’s able to.”

“Do you want me to stay for a minute?” Sorin asked, though he ‘saw’ nothing with Blind Sense. That didn’t mean much beyond that the threat was likely in the water, which didn’t narrow it down on Floor 4.

“No, better to get everyone back together as quickly as possible. We’ll be fine for a minute if the worst comes to pass.”

“Alright, be careful. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sorin stepped back through Liminal Gateway and paused. Something about going in and out repeatedly had perhaps provoked a reaction from the void, as it now seemed to be far more focused on the path snaking through its midst than usual. He couldn’t even say for sure what gave him that impression, just that the darkness felt… heavy. It weighed on him, leaving a subtle strain in his muscles.

Undaunted, he crossed the path and returned to the trio that was his original team still waiting for him. Thankfully, there was no disaster waiting on that side. “Everything alright?” Nemari asked as soon as she saw him.

He shook his head. “Yoru thinks there’s something in the water at the other side. No idea what it is. That’s fine, though. The issue is maybe… I don’t know. Something is starting to feel weird in liminal space. I think I attracted the void’s notice, somehow.”

“Are we stopping?” Rue asked.

Sorin shook his head. “Can’t afford to. It’s a short trip. If a voidling attacks us while we’re there, we’ll push out the other side and take care of it in tower space. Just stay with me and don’t panic.”

He held out a hand to Nemari, who took it with visible hesitation. Then he pulled them both into liminal space, where the void was somehow pressing down even harder overhead. Nemari staggered a step, kept upright only by the unbreakable grip between her hand and Sorin’s, and let out a small grunt of surprise.

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Instantly, the void sharpened. Sorin could see it in the way the silver dust along the edges started to drift away as if shaven off and set loose into a strong breeze. He could feel it in the prickling on his skin. They all knew it wasn’t just an environmental phenomenon. Creatures could and did spawn out of the darkness.

Sorin guided Nemari forward, having to tug on her twice to pry her attention away from the void surging around them so he could lead her to the exit. They popped out, and she promptly collapsed to the ground in a heap. A sheen of nervous sweat covered her face.

“That was terrifying,” she said.

“What happened?” Yoru asked, barely sparing her a glance before returning to watching the marsh.

“The void inside liminal space is getting agitated. It feels like it’s ready to collapse on us. I think we might need to wait to finish this up,” Sorin explained.

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never dealt with something like this before. Prior to being—transported, I guess?—to however it was I got here, I’d never heard of liminal space. If there were people like me in my old tower, they never made themselves known.”

Part of Sorin wanted to say there’d been no climbers in the blue tower who’d started somewhere else, but he couldn’t really prove that. In theory, whoever else who’d been part of Samael’s team had gone to different towers, and that would include the blue one. But then, that made some assumptions that everyone in that instance had survived the final guardian of the last floor of the tower.

Hell, it assumes there was a final guardian. It’s not like I can remember it.

“I’m going to go back to wait it out with Rue and Odric,” Sorin said. “Maybe start moving up toward the hub, and we’ll try to bring everyone else over in an hour or two.”

“Are you sure you should be making the crossing again so soon?” Nemari asked.

“No, but I am sure that sitting still like that will attract something sooner or later, and they’re in a lot more danger than the three of you are. This didn’t seem to happen when it was just me walking on the liminal path, so I’m hoping I won’t make it worse going back.”

“But you might,” Vendis pointed out.

Sorin nodded. “Maybe. Risk I’ll have to take, I suppose. It wouldn’t be the first voidling I destroyed there.”

“Godspeed,” Yoru told him. “We’ll wait at the hub for a few hours for you to catch up.”

* * *

“This is so boring,” Rue said.

“Boring is good,” her brother told her.

“Not really. Boring means no anima, no loot, and no money.”

“We weren’t ready for this floor, anyway.”

There was some truth to that. She’d heard Floor 4 was water-themed, but this was ridiculous. The entire thing was flooded. Every twenty feet, they were tripping over another stream. Anywhere there were trees ended up being a bog or a swamp or a marsh, and she honestly wasn’t sure what the difference was. That was just what Sorin and Yoru called them.

It completely made sense why everyone said Water Walking was mandatory, but the truth of the matter was that they hadn’t ever planned on actually doing Floor 4. If not for Yoru, Sorin would have immediately taken them to Floor 2 once they cleared the Antechamber, then fetched them when he was ready to kill the portal guardian here.

That plan was blown all to shit now, and for no good reason. Sorin had ended up bringing Yoru in on the big secret anyway, so she wasn’t sure why she was still here, getting soaked even standing on dry ground and breathing in air so humid it was a miracle she didn’t need some sort of soulprint to avoid drowning.

“Then we should go down to Floor 2 or even back to Floor 3 where we can actually do something,” Rue said.

“Forgot about the heat already, huh?”

Rue held up a hand to show off the temperature-controlling ring. “Got that handled, now.”

“Well, I don’t. So I’ll take this over the desert.”

“Don’t be such a—”

“What the hell is that?!” Od yelled, leaping to his feet and brandishing his staff.

Rue’s gaze immediately went to the symbol they probably weren’t far enough away from. Each trip Sorin had made without incident had seen them gravitate a few feet closer to the circle-and-line carving, and it was only fifty or sixty feet away now.

And it was completely black, with void oozing out of it a hundred times faster than when the last voidling had popped up. “Oh, fuck me, that is a lot of void,” Rue said, leaping to her feet and edging backward.

“You were the one who said you were bored,” Od told her.

“Not this bored.”

“Do you think we should run?”

“Yeah, that’d be a great fucking idea!”

Sorin popped out of the darkness, just appearing from inside the middle of it and pulling himself free while it clung to him in long, stringy wisps. “Go!” he all but screamed.

“Oh shit, shit, shit. What do we—” Rue started to ask, only to be interrupted and have the breath blasted out of her lungs when Od pivoted and rammed his shoulder into her gut, lifting her off her feet and running away.

A moment later, tendrils of black erupted out of the ground in every direction around the sign, so many that Rue didn’t even try to count them. Whatever was coming out of Sorin’s Liminal Gateway, it wasn’t something they could fight. Somehow, Od had noticed a second before Rue could. Thankfully, that had been enough time for him to act.

Od weaved through the grasping tentacles as they surged up toward the sky, and Rue got one last glimpse of Sorin breaking free of the void. He spun in place and swung his sword with both hands, obliterating the seven-tower sign behind him. Whatever good that did, Rue couldn’t begin to guess, but he’d thought it was important enough to let not one, but four void tendrils lash across his back in the process.

Then he vanished, simply blurring into a Sorin-colored blob for a fraction of a second before disappearing. The only reason Rue could tell he’d moved at all was that she could feel that tightly coiled steel spring of an aura he had, straining against the void around him somewhere to her left. A second later, it disappeared again, and she could do nothing but hope he was merely out of range.

The alternative was, of course, death, and if Sorin was dead, she and Od weren’t far behind.