The Fractured Tower

There was no livestock in the city, at least not outside the estates of the ultra-wealthy. Yoru knew that, and there was no way he could have possibly made that mistake on his own. He’d even questioned the goat’s presence when he’d seen it. Of course it was an illusion. Varint was an information specialist; he’d undoubtedly sussed out all Yoru’s sensory capabilities and known invisibility wouldn’t be enough to hide Nezu.

Somehow, the three Red Knife killers realized that Yoru had seen through their magic. In the second it took for his brain to catch up to what was really happening, the ‘goat’ practically teleported across the yard and rammed a knife into Yoru’s side. He felt a faint sting of skin breaking, barely more than a scratch, and then the back of his hand connected with Nezu’s face.

The diminutive man flew across the yard, smashed through the fence, and skidded to a stop thirty feet away in the street. He didn’t get back up. Tremor Sense showed no movement at all, not even breathing, making Yoru wonder if he’d killed the man with a single hit or if it was all another trick.

Varint and Ogre seemed stunned, too. However they’d expected their ‘business meeting’ to go, their plans apparently hadn’t included Yoru fighting back. Seizing the initiative, Yoru molded the ground beneath Ogre’s feet to open into a shallow pit. The huge man stumbled as he went down, throwing out his hands to catch himself. At the same time, the ground snapped back closed, burying him up to his waist.

It wouldn’t be enough, not on its own. Anyone with even a single E-rank strength-boosting soulprint could easily rip themselves free, but that wasn’t the point. The spell bought Yoru at least a few seconds uninterrupted to deal with Varint, who was by far the least physically dangerous of the Red Knife crew.

It had occurred to Yoru years ago that he couldn’t trust anything he thought he knew about the trio. So much of their presentation was a calculated facade that even the very basics could be wrong. He’d never actually worked with them in the field, and he’d already confirmed in this confrontation that there were layers upon layers to their tactics.

Varint tried to dart behind Ogre, maybe with the intention of using the man as a living shield, but a curtain of fire sprang into existence in front of him. Cut off from that route, the operator didn’t hesitate for an instant. He turned to flee back into the tavern.

Hostages were a complication Yoru did not need, but that was the moment Nezu’s next trick revealed itself. That tiny scratch from his knife had been deep enough after all. Despite Yoru’s impressive regeneration and resistance to toxins, burning pain radiated out from the wound. The anima he’d been channeling into his next spell shuddered inside his soulspace, and the magic fell apart halfway through.

Anima incapacitation. Not a poison then. It’s some sort of ability Nezu has that’s delivered through the wound. Can I fight in this condition? Yoru almost laughed. Do I have a choice?

Nezu finally took his first breath, proving he was down but not out. Yoru couldn’t afford to ignore him, but with his anima bucking against his control, he didn’t have the focus to split keeping tabs on a third opponent. Just wrangling his next attack took long enough that he lost sight of Varint.

Ogre ripped himself free just as the tavern door was swinging back closed. Predictably, he was the one member of Red Knife not bothering with subtlety; he took six lumbering steps across the lawn and brought his fist around in a wild, undisciplined swing designed to do nothing more than deliver raw power in as direct a manner as possible.

It was easy to see coming and easy to avoid, which was why it wasn’t the real attack. That didn’t mean he could ignore it—Ogre would absolutely put him in the ground if Yoru let him—just that there was another hit coming.

Varint’s off the field for the moment. Nezu is still down. Yoru checked again to make sure Tremor Sense confirmed that. It’s got to be a feint for something else Ogre is doing. The charge is all wrong for a kick or his other hand. Some sort of magical attack?

The headache from Augmented Cognition was already forming, probably made worse by whatever Nezu’s anima attack had done. This fight needed to end quickly, and it needed to end in Yoru’s favor. He had questions for Red Knife, and he couldn’t get answers out of them if they were all dead.

Non-lethal takedown, but Ogre can take a lot of punishment. No need to pull my punches with him.

His plan of action decided in the time those six steps provided him, Yoru met Ogre head on. A plane of force appeared directly in the path of that descending fist, splitting the skin between Ogre’s knuckles before shattering under the weight of the blow. It barely even slowed the huge man down, but it did reveal the truth of the trick.

Ogre was hiding his own movements, and what appeared to be a fleshy meteor threatening to cave in Yoru’s skull was in reality nothing at all. The illusion was so flexible that it had even incorporated Force Edge, and if Yoru believed his eyes, it was entirely plausible that what he’d seen was what had happened. Tremor Sense showed him the truth.

That slight hitch, the split second of hesitation, hadn’t really been there. The arm was entirely fake, with Ogre’s real arm wrapped in invisibility and swinging into an uppercut that could rip Yoru’s jaw off. That raw, unskilled strike with no stance behind it made perfect sense once Yoru thought past the apparent attack and considered the ideal punch to take advantage of Ogre’s momentum.

Taken from novelbuddy, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Yoru could only guess the exact angle of the uppercut. If he was wrong, he was going to get clipped by it, but the opportunity to slip inside his enemy’s guard was too good to pass up. He took a long step to his right, noted Ogre’s weight shifting to compensate, and jumped straight up. Yoru lost Tremor Sense when he left the ground, but it was worth it.

Hit right foot connected with the side of Ogre’s face, fully seven feet up from the grass, and Yoru put every bit of power he could into that hit. At almost the same time, he felt a hand skim across his left leg—Ogre’s missed uppercut—and smack the side of his knee. Pain spiked through the joint, but not enough to slow him down.

Ogre’s eyes crossed, and he dropped to one knee. Yoru landed a few feet away, a grimace on his face and his eyes darting about for the next trick. Instead, Ogre hit the dirt so hard that Yoru didn’t need Tremor Sense to feel the impact. The whole fight to this point had taken less than fifteen seconds, and, in his opinion, it was going pretty well.

Varint was the only one still active, and his ability to claim hostages would have been worrisome if not for one thing. Somehow, in the time it had taken Yoru to deal with Ogre, Varint had been repositioned from inside the tavern to face down on the ground and entirely cocooned in a web of force.

Yoru’s mind almost short-circuited trying to reconcile that. His first thought was that it was some sort of bait, just another trick to draw his attention away from the real next move. Then he looked past where Varint was lying to see Sorin standing in the doorframe, arms crossed and one shoulder leaning against it.

“I thought you had other business to take care of,” Yoru said.

“I got tired of waiting for these three to make a move. They wouldn’t even come into the tavern, but I figured if I left you alone, the bait might be too tempting for them to ignore.”

Yoru gave him a flat glare. “You could have told me.”

“They might have overheard. Besides, acting isn’t among your repertoire of talents.”

Yoru released his hold on Augmented Cognition and groaned. The anima incapacitation was ten times worse now—and maybe a bit more painful, though it was barely a bump in the road compared to everything else—but he’d already reached the limits of what he could bear.

As much as he wanted to be upset about being left out of Sorin’s plan, there was no time for it now. With all of Red Knife out of the fight, whatever magic they’d been using to suppress their true rank had unraveled, revealing them to be rank 18s. It was no wonder they’d all had C-rank soulprints at their disposal and felt comfortable using them.

“Let’s just get them somewhere and secure them before they come around and start trying to fight back again,” Yoru said. “Any ideas where?”

“There’s an empty building a block over. I’m not sure whose territory it is or what they use it for, but it’ll do for our purposes.”

“Good enough. I’ll carry that one.” Yoru pointed to Nezu. “You can haul the other two.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“I guess that makes us even.”

Sorin just laughed.

* * *

The good news was that their enchanter was still alive. In an unexpected show of moral fiber Sorin hadn’t expected to find, Morlin had made that a stipulation of the contract. The poor man had been beaten unconscious, perhaps more vigorously than was strictly necessary, and dropped off at a healer to recover. Morlin had even paid the bill.

That had been the most pressing issue, and after confirming that the big, doofy-looking one was telling the truth, Sorin felt himself finally unclench. It would have weighed on him to get an innocent man killed over all this, especially because the man had been so inconsequential that he’d never bothered to learn his name.

It was just his bad luck, but that didn’t make it any better. They’d have to do something nice for the enchanter as a parting gift and thanks for the tireless work he’d put in. Though if Yoru’s estimate of the amount of danirs they’d spent on the enchanter’s salary were in any way accurate, perhaps they’d already done enough.

“What now?” Yoru asked once they’d gotten all the details out of the trio.

“What do you want to do?” Sorin asked back.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

“Killing them in a fight is one thing. I wouldn’t think twice to defend myself. But executing a prisoner...”

Was I ever that young?

Sorin wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical argument about the gradients of murder. There was no difference in the end, not to the corpse. He wouldn’t torture these men, not for no reason, but if even half of what Yoru thought was true, they’d earned their death sentences ten times over.

The middle-height one, Varint, was sharper than Yoru. He’d realized exactly what his fate was and was even now subtly working to free himself. It wasn’t going to work, and Varint probably knew that, but it was better to try and still die than to give up and wait for it to happen. Sorin could respect that attitude.

“Why don’t you head back and collect that food. I’m sure they’re probably wondering where you went. I’ll be along shortly after you,” Sorin offered.

Yoru looked from him to the prisoners and then back again. “You’re going to kill them.”

“Do they deserve it?”

“They’re... bad people.”

“Do they deserve it?” Sorin repeated.

“Is there any difference between me saying ‘yes’ and doing it myself?” Yoru asked.

The struggling wasn’t subtle anymore, and it wasn’t just Varint. All three of them were attempting to escape the force trap Sorin had caught them in. It was just their bad luck that their group had hyperspecialized on misdirection and ambushes. Without the force multiplier from catching their victims off guard, there was no chance of them overpowering Sorin.

“Not to me,” Sorin said. “Maybe it means something to you.”

The traps appeared to be empty now. To Sorin’s senses, even the feedback he got from the lines of force, the trio of hired killers was gone. Observer showed him otherwise, not that he needed it to guess the truth.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” Yoru said, “mostly about my father. His actions. The values he taught me. I wonder if he ever really believed in any of them. Did he lose himself somewhere along the way? I’d like to think he did, that he really was the person I remember from my childhood. Mother’s death was hard on him. Maybe that was when he changed.”

Sorin stood quietly and waited for Yoru to finish his thought. They looked at the seemingly empty force trap together. Sorin knew Yoru wasn’t fooled either, though the short one, Nezu, was making a surprising amount of headway in escaping for real. Human bodies were not meant to bend that way, but nobody had told him that.

Sorin tightened the web while he waited. The illusion making it appear slack and empty shattered a few seconds later, revealing all three men just as tightly bound as they’d been for the last half an hour.

“One of the things I learned was to take responsibility for your actions,” Yoru said. “And unlike my father, I have no intention to abandon my honor.”

Five minutes later, they left the building together.