The Fractured Tower

There were a few right ways to climb and a lot of wrong ways. A wrong way, in Sorin’s mind, was any way that involved taking a lot of unnecessary risks—or any unnecessary risks, really—just to avoid spending more time and effort on something. Unfortunately, his time was in very, very limited supply right now, so he’d been forced to reassess his definition of ‘unnecessary.’

That was why he was in a ruin by himself, attacking outposts and towns while outnumbered a hundred to one. Sure, he’d done it before. He’d developed tactics and had experience. He knew what worked, what didn’t, and that the key to surviving was to avoid being pinned down. But usually, he was thirty or forty ranks higher than whatever floor he was challenging that way. Usually, he had enough defensive soulprints to be essentially invincible.

That wasn’t the case here, and even though he was reasonably certain he’d killed off the last of the demonic elves assaulting his mind, he couldn’t afford to let his guard down. The ruin guardian itself had a more powerful version of the same ability in addition to a build that emphasized speed and devastatingly powerful attacks. Getting stunned at the wrong moment could get him killed.

The human climber and the demonic elf met in a clash of steel amidst a rain of black flames. Still Winter pulsed out in a rush at the same time, pushing back the fire and slowing down the guardian. They slipped past each other, both moving at speeds too fast to be seen without a sensory soulprint.

Sorin was stronger, and he was ruthless about leveraging that advantage. Without help from the other monsters, the guardian couldn’t compensate anymore, and it quickly found itself being pushed around the arena. The artillery squad ended up doing more damage to the elf than anything else, and it never came close to catching Sorin.

Their fight balanced on a fragile equilibrium for about eight seconds, the guardian’s mental attacks being just bothersome enough to block Sorin from going in for the kill. He bled the monster instead, attacking with both his sword and with Force Weaver. Then the chill of Still Winter started to set into the elf’s muscles. It didn’t slow it down much, but it was enough to finally tip the balance.

He blocked a strike that would have sliced open his stomach with his sword, shoved the guardian back off balance in the same movement, and accepted a nick to his arm from the monster’s bare hand, magically sharpened with a plane of force running down the side. They’d been in similar positions three times already, and he knew its response was another blast of psychic energy designed to leave him dazed and disoriented.

He also knew he couldn’t fight through it fast enough to prevent it from escaping the clinch. That was why he’d already manifested a net of force directly behind the elf. It slammed his mind with its magic and leaped backward, only this time it wasn’t fast enough to slip past the magic. The net closed around it, digging into its scaly skin.

The guardian wasn’t so much injured by the web of force as it was inconvenienced. Whether it was too tough or it had simply recognized the trap in time to avoid smashing into it at full speed, Sorin’s spell hadn’t actually hurt it. What it had done was cause the elf to stop moving for a fraction of a second, and that was long enough.

A length of blue steel rammed through its ribs and exploded out its back. Anima flashed into existence around the elf, or maybe from inside it. Sorin was well past the point where he could reasonably expect a wound like that to be fatal to a guardian, so he wasn’t terribly surprised to see it still fighting. But force raced up the sword, then spiraled out once it reached the inside of the elf’s chest cavity.

Its skin might have been tough enough to resist Force Weaver, but its organs weren’t. Blood exploded out of the monster as Sorin tore his blade free of it. It stumbled back a step, then another, confusion plain on its face. Sorin could practically hear it trying to figure out how it had lost.

Confusion transitioned to wrath in an instant as it realized it had no way to survive the injury, that the best it could hope for was vengeance. That, too, was an expected response. Monsters with higher intelligence were still monsters. Heedless of the fact that it was only killing itself more quickly, it threw itself at Sorin.

He didn’t bother to fight back. The monster was past the point where it could be deterred by pain. All his moves were solely defensive, and with both Force Weaver and Still Winter still active, it wasn’t too hard to keep himself safe. The artillery squad’s interference was actually the biggest threat at this point.

The battle might have only lasted a minute, but fully half of that was spent letting the demonic elf guardian play out the last vestiges of its life. It was a good thing he couldn’t be capped by the floor limit anymore, because feeling that rush of anima coming in was the only sure indicator that a monster had actually died. That was how he knew that the guardian was faking when it collapsed, probably hoping he’d drop his guard and approach its ‘corpse’ to loot it.

Instead, he started launching force bolts across the cavern, lobbing them in a high arc to get the extra range needed to reach the artillery squad. Most of the attacks fell short, but just the action forced the ruin guardian to give up on its ruse and resume its attack. Sorin defeated it quickly, and with most of the elves also dead, he felt he could be a little less frugal with his anima now.

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The rest of the ruin was a formality. The demonic elves couldn’t hide from Sorin, no matter what they tried. He hunted them down, found the ruin heart itself, and looted the place. Other than the slate, the most valuable find ended up being a soulprint in the guardian’s eye that contained Mind Blast, the D-rank upgrade from Shock Pulse.

If only I had the other components to go with it, he silently lamented. It wasn’t a serious complaint, though; between the guardian and those two psychics he’d noted, he already had the rarest parts in his possession.

Sorin exited the ruin via Liminal Gateway and returned to Floor 0. He was a few days early, but the haul from the ruin was good enough to justify the trip, especially because they would once again need to fence their own goods and find their own upgrades. For the moment, his destination was a discreet house in a middling district, protected more by anonymity than anything else.

Nemari had given him the location and told him she’d planned to rent it, but he hadn’t wanted to wait to find out how that had gone. He’d simply trusted she could get it done or, if not, that he could track them down again. Now that he’d used Eyes of Light to upgrade his sensory soulprints to Observer, Floor 0 was no longer really big enough to hide in.

Odric was in the area, though not in the house Nemari had indicated she was renting. That still sat empty, and Odric was in a different house a block over. I guess negotiations fell through, but it doesn’t really matter. We never needed that specific building.

Sorin knocked on the door and waited for Odric to come unlock it. Their healer was wearing an apron that had puffs of flour on it, and his hands were still wet from being hastily rinsed off. He was unarmed and unarmored, but Sorin supposed it was forgivable on Floor 0, even if Odric hadn’t bothered to check who was at the door first.

“What if I’d been a Hellion hit squad come to avenge their fallen master?” Sorin asked, to which Odric just rolled his eyes.

“Everybody else is out right now,” he said. “And you’re early.”

“Just needed to unload the loot,” Sorin explained. “Though I might stay for lunch if you’re making extra. It smells good.”

The house only had two rooms, both too small for a full team to be comfortable in, but it was in good repair and, most importantly, offered a measure of privacy. One corner of the second room was full of the team’s gear and supplies, and the rest was taken up by a pair of beds. Two wasn’t nearly enough, even if they were willing to share, so Sorin guessed they’d come with the rental.

The main room was one-third kitchen, a third dining table, and a third empty. Everything was plain, which suited Sorin just fine. He was glad Nemari had opted for function over extravagance. The only real complaint Sorin had was the number of windows secured by nothing more than shutters, but the fact that they’d left one person behind told him that they were aware of the vulnerability and wouldn’t leave their base of operations unguarded.

“I need to hit the markets and find a specific soulprint for a merger I’m working on,” Sorin said after he deposited the bags. “Feel free to root through there for anything you like, though it’s nothing better than what we already had access to. We’ll sell off whatever nobody wants.”

“Maybe when I’m done cooking,” Odric said, eyeing the bags with interest.

“Any idea when everyone will be back?”

“I expect it’ll be right around the time the food’s done.”

Sorin laughed. “Yeah, that’d be when I’d want to show up, too. See you in a bit.”

* * *

Sorin returned to a full house. The dining table only seated four, and even that was a tight squeeze once the food got added to the middle, so nobody was really using it. Instead, they stood around with plates held in hand or sat on the floor if they didn’t want to hold it.

“I take it you’re still on Floor 12,” Yoru said by way of greeting when Sorin walked in. He nodded toward the bags, which had obviously been rifled through and hastily repacked to reclaim the floor space.

“Just finished the ruin and got my next slate,” Sorin said. “I’ll push up to Floor 13 tomorrow or the day after, depending how long it takes me to track down the portal guardian.”

“Sure, do it in less than a week,” Rue muttered. “Not like we spent two months going non-stop to cover the same ground.”

“I imagine it was a bit more difficult for you than it’s been for me,” he told her.

“Ignore Rue,” Nemari said. “Grab a plate and let’s go over the loot together.”

“There’s not much of use in there. I was hoping to get you guys to fence it for me while I finish catching up. Have you made any progress tracking down that merchant I mentioned?”

“No, we haven’t found your girlfriend yet,” Rue said. “Speaking of, don’t you think she’s a bit old for you?”

“What? Why would she be?” Sorin asked. “She’s barely forty.”

“Which is almost twice as old as you.”

“Not really, though. Just because I look young doesn’t mean I am. It’d be... weird... going after anyone even close to the average age of his room.”

Not that I’m actually pursuing her. Maybe an overnight once in a while, but I don’t have time for a relationship right now.

“What do you think of renewing our partnership with Bradford and the Club House in the meantime?” Nemari proposed.

“I’m not against it, but I kind of doubt he’ll go for it,” Sorin said. “The clientele there isn’t exactly high ranked. Who’s going to be able to afford Floor 12 raw materials, D-rank soulprints, and feather steel equipment?”

The Club House catered mostly to rank 0 climbers looking to get started. Anyone past rank 3 or 4 would outgrow its services and probably find themselves at the Climber’s Union instead, but Sorin wasn’t interested in working with them. They were a parasitic organization that existed only to profit themselves, and he doubted they’d offer reasonable prices on anything he wanted to sell.

“He’s got some contacts among the higher-ranked climbers, too,” Nemari said. “Actually, he’s helping us pass your message on to Lorvaine.”

“Hmm. Well, if you want to work with him, I have no objections. We don’t have Samael screwing with us anymore, so we should be able to work out a better deal now.”

Nemari nodded. “I’ll set it up after lunch. Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ve got other work to take care of.” Sorin shook his head and took a bite of the biscuit Odric had baked. Surprisingly good. He took another bite. “After lunch, of course.”