The Fractured Tower

They ended up going to the Hellion’s base of operations first for a very simple reason: the team of operators Yoru was looking for weren’t in any of their usual haunts. Without the ability to find them, there wasn’t much more they could do on that front. Sorin floated the idea that Morlin had tied up some loose ends, but Yoru rejected that.

Urd did not appear surprised to see Sorin when they reached his personal quarters. That probably had something to do with the guy who’d gone running to warn him the second Sorin and Yoru had shown up while his buddy tried to stall them for a few minutes.

Yoru, on the other hand, was very much a surprise. The messenger apparently hadn’t been liberal with the details. Urd just tilted his head quizzically at Yoru for a moment, then let out a quiet, “Ah. I should have known.”

Urd never exactly looked healthy, but he was somehow even more haggard than usual. Sorin couldn’t decide quite what gave that impression, but it was probably the multitude of small things. His clothes were rumpled. His hair wasn’t neatly combed. His skin was pale and his eyes even more sunken into his skull. Slumped shoulders lent an air of heaviness and exhaustion that replaced his normally crisp movements.

“I don’t need to explain why I’m here, do I?” Sorin asked.

“I expected to surprise you, but it seems our exit was too flashy.”

Sorin thought it more likely that Urd hadn’t planned to tell him at all. He wasn’t surprised that the Hellions knew they had the cabinet, though perhaps that was unfair. It would have been far easier to steal the cabinet from them than it had been from Morlin Telpike.

“It might have been more difficult to trace it to you if you hadn’t left a body behind,” Sorin said.

Urd was too disciplined to really let his emotions show on his face, but Sorin caught a glimpse of irritation. He couldn’t say whether it was at having lost one of his men or at having been caught, though. For all Sorin knew, it could just as easily be both or neither.

“Perhaps this is for the best,” he murmured. “The device was damaged in the escape, and none of the craftsmen I’ve had examining it are quite sure how stable it is or how to repair it.”

“You should have just left it there,” Yoru told him bluntly. “We could have repossessed it ourselves without any of the collateral damage your team caused.”

Are you upset about the cabinet or the hole in your dad’s house?

In truth, the cabinet was more valuable than the building. Sorin wasn’t happy about losing it, and he was even less so about it no longer being usable, but his team was on the threshold of outgrowing it anyway. The enchanters of the red tower simply weren’t good enough to utilize the cabinet to its full potential, and the tower itself was starting to reward them with gear that rivaled the best the cabinet could give them.

The gear also wouldn’t make much difference in the upcoming struggle. Fighting void creatures would strip the magic right out of anything they brought to the field. When they got to Floor 24, they’d be using gear that was remarkably like what they’d worn on Floor 1. The only difference would be the tower-colored weapons they’d gotten from the Antechamber.

And we can kiss the enchantments on those goodbye, too, he thought sourly. Well, if it was easy to break the Void Wall, the tower wouldn’t need us to do it. We’ve got enough advantages over a normal climber already.

“Alright, let’s see how bad the damage is,” Sorin said. He knew there was no way he could fix it, and he was mostly looking both to assure himself that he was aware of where the cabinet was and that Urd wasn’t lying to him. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, but we can discuss it while we walk.”

Urd did not want to do it. It was a testament to exactly how wiped out he was that Sorin could read that in his body language. It was obvious that the only thing the new leader of the Hellions wanted was to return to his bed and sleep. Maybe it was ingrained discipline from serving Samael for years, or maybe it was plain old devotion to the cause, but whatever the reason, he forced his body to obey his will.

“Of course,” he said with a wan smile. “Anything I can do to help.”

They were hanging their final hopes for an easy solution to Odric’s injuries on Urd. Yoru had already told him on the way over that he’d talked with two different healers his family retained, and neither offered an answer. It was frustrating because, to Sorin, this was an easy problem. He’d seen messy fieldwork that could bring Odric back to the peak of health.

But the red tower was so limited in power thanks to Samael’s actions that anyone and everyone who might have known how to address the issue was dead. The soulprints that could fix that kind of damage were completely unknown here, probably because they were on the other side of the Void Wall.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from novelbuddy. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It’s only been a decade! Where is the institutional knowledge from the last dozen generations of climbers? It’s like the other three-quarters of the tower doesn’t even exist to these people.

The closest Sorin had gotten to anything like that was a story or two from healers about how their own masters had been able to treat those kinds of injuries, but those people were all dead now. It was almost like someone had deliberately purged those records and hunted down anyone who might remember.

He described the kind of healing soulprint they were looking for while they walked. Urd considered it for a while, long enough that Sorin started to dread the inevitable answer, but then he finally spoke. “I cannot be entirely confident in this, as it is based on assumptions. I know that Samael was capable of healing such a wound, but I am sure you are aware that he was able to cast spells he lacked the soulprint for.”

Sorin’s heart sank. “Yes, of course.”

“However, he complained more than once that he had no interest in wasting his time serving as a healer and made plans to lead a farming expedition to Floor 21. That never happened, obviously.”

“Do you know what monster he was targeting?” Sorin asked. With any luck, it would also be on a different floor. Floor 21 was a labyrinth of ice and metal. Going through it once had been more than enough for him.

“The polar wyrm.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

“Rare, difficult to kill, and smart enough to run if it feels outmatched, all inside a living maze floor doing its best to kill you with freezing temperatures. Yeah, I can see why he never got around to spending a lot of time there.”

“I’m sorry not to have better news for you.”

“It’s more than I had to go on before. Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, sir.”

“Do you know what the soulprint is called?” Yoru asked.

“Hmm. I know that Lord Samael called his ability Inner Growth, but I do not know if the soulprint he was targeting is the same one.”

“Probably not,” Sorin said with a frown. “A polar wyrm, huh? Normally, it would be some sort of regeneration with a focus on toxicity, but for one that lives in ice... Might be Burning Light. Yeah, I could see how that would work in this situation.”

“Can you cast it?” Yoru asked.

Sorin shook his head. “Never really needed it. It’s hyper specialized to act as an internal heat source for cold-blooded monsters living in frozen environments. Part of that is repairing damaged tissues, but I don’t think it would differentiate between freezing or burning injuries. It would work for what we need it to do.”

“Then it’s merely a question of how long it takes us to acquire one.”

‘Merely?’ I don’t think you understand how difficult this is going to be. It could take months of work.

But he just forced a brief smile and said, “It’s good to have a plan. It might have to wait until after we deal with the void, though.”

“We need Odric up there with us,” Yoru said. “Perhaps a quick survey expedition to see just how difficult it is to find polar wyrms before we shelve the idea.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“We might be able to assist with that,” Urd said. “There are a few climbers in our ranks who could handle Floor 21 but who aren’t able to fight against the void. It would be better to use their time than yours.”

“If they got lucky, I suppose, but how much progress can they really make in a week?” Sorin asked.

“Just a week?”

“That’s how long I plan to spend on Floor 23. Everything after that is preparation for the Void Wall.”

Urd fell silent as he considered that time frame. Before he could come up with an answer, they reached a doorway deep underground. Three Hellions guarded it, all of them rank 13. It wasn’t enough to stop anyone truly powerful, but considering that the cabinet was already broken, it seemed like overkill to Sorin.

He saw two of them activate some sort of perception ability, perhaps to see illusions or other disguise abilities, before relaxing and stepping aside. The third followed their lead, and all three remained silent. Urd waved them off, then pulled a key from the inner pocket of his vest.

“Here we are, gentlemen,” he said, opening the door and gesturing for them to enter.

Six craftsmen were inside. They alternated taking turns examining the cabinet and muttering to each other and themselves. One side had been staved in from a blow, possibly a punch or kick, leaving a hole big enough for Sorin to stick his head through. It looked like the Hellions had managed to keep the material, judging by the splintered planks laid out on the table next to the cabinet.

Yep. That thing’s basically destroyed. It might work as a regular armoire, but the enchantment on it’s gone.

Behind him, Yoru quietly choked in outrage. “It was priceless!” he hissed. “One of a kind! We weren’t even sure they existed prior to its discovery.”

“Yes,” Urd agreed tersely. “I assure you, we’re no more thrilled about it than you are.”

Sorin watched the workers study it for a few seconds before shaking his head. “The enchantment is completely shattered. Fixing the physical damage won’t bring it back. They’re wasting their time.”

“Yes and no. Their initial assessment agrees with yours. There’s no bringing the device back to what it was. What we’re doing here is trying to learn from it. The primary function, as I understand it, is to function as a container to store anima until the enchanter has enough to perform whatever enchantment the user desires. Our hope is to replicate that, at least on a small scale. We won’t be able to replace the cabinet tomorrow, but someday...”

“It’s a step forward,” Sorin finished for him.

“It’s salvaging a bad situation as best they can,” Yoru corrected. “They’re just the last people in a chain of greedy climbers making things worse, and ultimately, we’re the ones that are paying the cost.”

“Well, us and that dead guy they left buried under debris,” Sorin said dryly. “I’d say he paid for his part in this, too.”

The cabinet was a loss, but the visit had yielded some useful information. Sorin was still more inclined to blame Morlin than Urd, though there was some truth to the idea that if Urd had simply let Sorin know about the theft when they’d found out rather than making a move to grab the cabinet themselves, it would probably still be in one piece.

I’d be a lot more pissed about this if we’d still had a lot of need for it. With Samael already dead and it being useless against the void, though, it’s mostly the monetary value that’s been lost.

“I think we’ve gained all we can here,” Sorin said in response to Yoru’s quiet seething. “Let’s go back.”