The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 49

Nemari trudged across the sand in a daze. It was hard to gather her thoughts and organize them in her head, and she didn’t think that had anything to do with the venom that giant hornet had pumped into her neck. She’d burned that monster to ashes less than a second after its stinger had pierced skin, and Odric had managed to keep her from bleeding out long enough to heal the actual wound.

It was too bad his Cleanse soulprint lacked the power to remove the venom from her body, but he’d stalled its deadly progress long enough for Sorin to do… something. She’d been a bit too far out of it to follow the conversation at the time. Whatever it was, just taking away the burning pain was a blessed relief in and of itself.

It was only after she’d had some time to recover and they’d started walking that she finally began the laborious process of putting things together in her head. She had clear memories of attempting to return to the portal hub, only to be driven off by more of her family coming through. They’d fled into the desert, eventually shaking off their pursuers through a combination of luck and perseverance.

Then the swarm had hit them, a fluke of timing perhaps, while they were sleeping. That fight was a chaotic jumble that started with Rue screaming the alarm and ended with incinerating waves of flame that she’d briefly worried would cook the human side of the fight along with the insects. Thankfully, they’d gotten out of the way in time.

And now… Now most of my family is dead. We have almost no climbers left, which I guess means the Sildfalls are done as a middle family. So much for us climbing out of the lower ranks and becoming an important pillar of the city.

She wasn’t sure why she cared. That had never been her dream, anyway. It was an ideal that had been forced on her, drilled endlessly into her head during her childhood. It was ironic that she’d hesitated so hard to finish off the very same people who’d betrayed her, especially considering they’d done it with hardly a second thought.

Guilt twisted her insides, followed swiftly by anger. She couldn’t even say who she was mad at. Her father, for letting Uncle Nat do what he’d done? Maybe. Uncle Nat himself, for sacrificing her instead of standing up for family like he’d always preached. Definitely. Herself, for feeling guilty about being the indirect cause of so many people she’d known her whole life dying?

And why the hell should I feel bad about that? They betrayed me!

It all made sense in her head. The family had broken faith with her, not the other way around. She didn’t need to feel bad about them paying the consequences of their actions. Uncle Nat’s twisted logic would have said she should have sacrificed herself for the good of the family, but she was starting to think ‘the good of the family’ really meant ‘the good of Uncle Nat.’

Regardless of her personal thoughts on the matter, the fighting strength of her family had been broken by the man walking in front of her. That was a whole new knot of complications. Despite everything, he’d displayed an admirable amount of loyalty to her personally, so it was only natural that his position would place him in opposition to her family.

But he was still the man who’d killed them.

She couldn’t bring herself to feel any sort of hatred for him for that, just more guilt that she’d been the catalyst for all the violence. More and more, she regretted the day she’d agreed to work with him. That had been the turning point where her life had started to fall apart.

“How do you feel?” Odric asked gently.

“Tired,” she said, and she meant it in every meaning of the word.

“Understandable. It’s been a lot. All of this, I mean.”

A bitter laugh slipped out. “That’s underselling it.”

“Do you want to quit?” he asked. “Now’s the time to get out if we’re going to.”

“I don’t know,” she told him. “I really don’t.”

* * *

Rue was silent the entire walk back. All around her, she could feel auras from the others. Most of them were rank 4, just like her, and their presence reflected that. Sorin had advanced—again—to what she guessed was either rank 8 or 9, but he felt more like a rank 11. It was always disconcerting to feel his actual rank with his solid-ice aura overshadowing it.

Then there was the new face, a retired bounty hunter who worked for Yoru’s father now. He hadn’t done anything threatening, but his mere presence was concerning. There was a climber who made his living hunting other climbers, which meant he was far, far more dangerous than his rank implied, and that was already high enough to kill everyone else without issue.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from NovelBin. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Everyone except Sorin, that is. Once again, we’re relying on him to protect us. I hate that we’re always in that position.

She’d already made her decision, the same as she’d made it back on Floor 1. As long as she could, she was sticking with Sorin. It had barely been a month, and she’d grown from rank 0 to rank 4. His promise of rank 20 in a year didn’t seem that farfetched anymore, and she had faith that they could do it now.

Admittedly, this new thing with a floor full of voidlings was an unpleasant complication. Those things were an absolute nightmare to kill, resulted in her walking away with less anima than when she’d started, and were guaranteed never to have a soulprint. Fighting hundreds or thousands of them wasn’t something she wanted to sign up for.

But if she framed it as doing the tower a favor, one which it would richly reward her for in the Antechamber, then it wasn’t so bad. Of course, if it just kept giving her stuff like Void Resistance, that was an issue since highly niche and situational abilities were amazing when needed and useless the rest of the time.

But so what? Even if the tower does give me useless shit for anything but taking care of its problem, I’ll still be a high rank at the end of this. I can get soulprints to fill up even a rank 20 soulspace, and I’d be practically untouchable.

Really, the question wasn’t whether she was going to keep climbing. It was who was going to go with her. This whole Void wall thing—not to mention the Samael thing—seemed like a big deal to Yoru, so Rue assumed the arrangement would go through the way Sorin wanted it to. Presumably, that meant Yoru and Vendis would be permanent members of the team moving forward.

Nemari would have been pissed about having to fight Yoru for control of the team if Sorin hadn’t already taken the mantle of leadership from her back on Floor 2. That assumed she was even going to stick with them, which Rue wasn’t sure about anymore.

Their fire mage had horrible luck. Every time somebody went down, it was her. The manticore had gotten her. That rat swarm had gotten her. The venomous hornets had gotten her. Part of it was just that she had no defensive soulprints in her build. Rue had been hit by things that would have taken her out of commission, too, but she had Iron Body to protect her and Minor Regeneration to patch up the small scrapes she did get.

Od had a similar protection with Stone Skin, which was actually significantly stronger than Iron Body. It was a bit harder to use, but he hadn’t failed to block a big hit with it yet, and the times he did make a mistake, it was small enough that he could just immediately heal himself back up.

So maybe it’s not luck, then. Maybe it’s just another case of Sorin being right. Builds need a certain amount of utility in them, and she’s got almost nothing but offense. The only defensive soulprint she has is Barrier, and it’s too weak for what we’re fighting now, not that she really ever used it all that much to begin with.

Maybe it would be for the best if Nemari dropped out, but Rue really didn’t know what else the fire mage could do at this point. She was already an outcast from her family, most of whom were now dead anyway. If she returned to Floor 0, she wouldn’t be able to protect herself. Rank 4 was impressive for how little time she’d been climbing, not in an absolute sense.

She’ll probably keep going because she feels trapped, Rue reasoned. She turned her attention to her brother, who walked next to Nemari with his head bent low in a whispered conversation. But what about you, Od? Are you only here to keep an eye on me? Do you even want this for yourself?

* * *

Blind Sense wasn’t a high fidelity soulprint. It showed Sorin enough detail to determine who was who without having to visually check, but it was nowhere near powerful enough to read facial expressions or make out fine, dexterous finger movements.

His position near the front of their line meant he spent his time scanning the dunes for threats instead of studying his companions, but he thought he had a good enough handle on their personalities to guess what thoughts were racing through their minds.

Nemari and Rue were easy. They were guilt and ambition, simple and straightforward. Nemari had been cast adrift and needed time to sit down and reevaluate her entire life. Unfortunately, all Sorin could promise her was a few more hours of semi-peaceful travel—the monsters were even more aggressive than usual since they were breaking the unwritten rule of traveling in a team greater than six—and maybe a quiet room somewhere on the Telpike family grounds for her to rest.

Rue would stick to him as long as Sorin let her, and while he hated to think in such callous terms, she’d proven moldable enough that she was well on her way to becoming a useful combat asset. Since that was what Sorin needed at the moment, he’d do nothing to discourage her.

It was Odric that was somewhat of a mystery. He’d never really expressed his own goals, at least not to Sorin. Beyond protecting his sister, he’d gone somewhat passively along with whatever the rest of the team wanted. At one point, Sorin had thought the big man had a bit of a crush on Nemari, but as more time went by, he’d become convinced otherwise.

Odric was just a caring person, and Nemari was the one who seemed to most often get into trouble. The thing about him was that he only ever seemed to react to everyone else around him, and Sorin couldn’t get a handle on his reasons for doing anything. He had no idea if Odric wanted to fight back the void, and that worried him, because he was completely sure Rue was going to follow him. And if she said yes, Odric was guaranteed to follow along.

Sorin didn’t want that, and not just because Odric was ill-suited for battling voidlings. It wasn’t right to ask anyone to risk their lives for this, and it certainly wasn’t right to allow Odric to volunteer under the circumstances.

The portal hub came into sight, drawing a tired cheer from most of the team. “Alright,” Sorin said. “We’ve got some stuff to discuss before we hit Floor 0, but I think I speak for everyone when I say we’re all sick of this fucking desert, so let’s head through that portal down to Floor 2 and find a comfortable place to relax at their hub while we decide on our next move.”