The Fractured Tower

For four God-damn days, Nemari had hung around the Floor 3 portal hub waiting for somebody to show up. Yoru had gone back to Floor 0. Vendis had gone with him, because of course he would. Rue and Odric were stranded somewhere in the middle of Floor 4, and she could only hope Sorin had made it back to them.

And so Nemari had waited, watching the portal to see if anyone she’d recognize would show up. Of course, when somebody finally did, it wasn’t anyone from her team. No, it was one of her cousins. Thankfully, he’d been one of the stupider ones, and barely rank 3 at that. She’d subdued him easily enough, even gotten a few minutes to question him.

Then Dant had shown up with Cuizo and that idiot friend of theirs. He wasn’t even part of the Sildfall family, being just one of Dant’s drinking buddies. In a way, that made it worse. Nemari had only a vague idea of what kind of build he had, so she’d prioritized taking him out first.

After that, things had gone downhill. There was an oasis maybe ten miles south of the portal hub, which wasn’t a lot in absolute terms, but it was a hell of a run to make when being pursued by one man who’d stacked physical enhancements in his build and another who’d focused on speed.

Fortunately, she’d managed to arm herself with a barrel of water before leaving the hub, which she’d used to leave some absolutely monstrous bruises and a few broken bones on the duo before running off. If she’d thought she could have managed it, she’d have hit the portal itself and gone back to Floor 4. There’d be plenty for Water Bond to grab hold of there.

Nemari ran while her lungs burst in her chest and her legs trembled with fatigue. Dant hadn’t caught up until around mile eight or so, but Cuizo had come with him. The last ten minutes of her life had been extremely hectic as her family had proven that specializing in fire damage didn’t work well against climbers who had defenses specifically to protect them from the heat.

Never thought I’d be thanking him for it, but it’s a good thing Sorin forced me to take Water Bond.

She sprinted through the stone spires and up to the edge of the oasis, then hesitated for barely a second as she registered the solid shapes of a dozen or so crocs in the water. That was a complication, but maybe one she could use to her advantage. The idea of hurling a wave of water with two or three monsters in it at Dant as he approached was somewhat amusing, though she wasn’t sure exactly how practical it would be.

The monsters had definitely noticed her though. Two were already swimming her way, and the others were starting to move. Before she could decide what to do about that, Cuizo made an appearance next to her. This time, he came to a stop ten feet away, and she saw with no small amount of grim satisfaction that he was holding his side where she’d stabbed him.

Considering how little aim she’d had in that wild swing, it was a miracle she’d hit him at all. Now that he was standing still, though, she wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass her by. Unlike Dant, Cuizo didn’t have an E-ranked Fire Resistance soulprint to protect him.

She sent out two firebolts at him, causing him to yelp in surprise and fear. That’s right, shitheads. I figured out how to do that, and I’ve only gotten better at it.

Driving Cuizo backward, Nemari had to take a moment to consider if she wanted to actually kill him. He hadn’t been involved in her initial capture or anything that happened after, but he was out here working with Dant now. She wondered what story he’d spun about her escape.

She saw the croc drifting closer to Cuizo’s flailing form and knew it wouldn’t hesitate to lunge out of the water. At that point, with its teeth around him, her cousin was probably a dead man. All she had to do was keep him distracted for a few more seconds with some flashy, if ultimately harmless, pyrotechnics.

Her conscience betrayed her in the end. Maybe if it had been Dant in that position, she’d have chosen differently, but she was almost certain Cuizo had been lied to, and she couldn’t justify murdering him. A jet of water shot out of the oasis and slammed into his stomach, throwing him back a full five feet and leaving him groaning in pain. But he was also far enough from the edge of the water that he’d have a few seconds’ warning when the croc got to him.

That was all the time she had to deal with that issue. Dant was a close-range specialist, someone who threw punches and kicks lined with powerful, roaring flames. He could and did occasionally hurl a few ranged blasts, but they were no stronger than what she’d been capable of at rank 0.

He closed the rest of the distance while she was dealing with Cuizo, and the water jet she summoned to hit him wasn’t nearly strong enough to actually halt his rush. Nemari’s sword flashed up to menace his face, but he simply slapped it aside with his bare hand. Annoyingly, he was so much stronger than her that she lost her grip on the handle, and it went spinning off to stick point-first into the sand.

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His other hand closed into a fist and collided with her jaw, sending Nemari spiraling into the water. It was surprisingly cool, all things considered, but she was more focused on the fact that there were a dozen rank 3 predators in the oasis with her. At least one of them was within fifteen feet, maybe closer.

Water Bond proved its worth again. Nemari couldn’t really swim on her own. She knew the basics, but there’d been precious little opportunity to practice on Floor 0. Without a soulprint that allowed her to manipulate the water around her, she would have simply sunk to the silt at the bottom of the oasis and been at the mercy of the local wildlife.

Instead, if she took a moment to actually process what Water Bond told her, she could tell that no less than three monsters had noted her entry into the oasis and were smoothly gliding forward to investigate. The first one was seconds away, and her window for dealing with it was rapidly closing.

Move it or move myself. Can I affect something that heavy, though? Well, why not? Water’s heavy enough on its own. A body in it won’t add that much more weight relative to what I’m already pushing.

Her sole regret was that she wouldn’t be able to see Dant’s face. Anima poured out of her, seizing control of the water the croc swam through, and with a mental heave, she sent it surging up to the shore. A brief wave rose out of the oasis’s surface, carrying its deadly payload, and she felt the instant the water hit her cousin.

She also felt the croc hit him a fraction of a second later. Unfortunately, it hadn’t expected its rapid relocation and was in no position to close its jaws around Dant’s body, but the two did end up tangled together as they went down.

Nemari pushed herself out of the water a moment later, and not a second too quickly. The other crocs were still coming in her direction, and standing atop the oasis wasn’t dissuading them from investigating her. She took a few rushed steps back onto the sand, then thought better of it and added another twenty feet of space between her and the water.

Dant was rolling around in the shallows, wrestling with a croc that was bigger than he was. He might have had the advantage in raw strength, but it had six limbs, a few rows of razor-sharp ridges running down its hide, and a jaw big enough to bite off his head. The added complication of him being partially submerged had reduced his firepower by quite a bit, too.

She took the time to drag Cuizo away from the oasis edge, but when it came to rescuing Dant, the practical side of Nemari’s mind warned her that she had no way to secure him. The best she could do was leave him wounded while she fled and just hope that he wouldn’t catch up again, which would only happen if he didn’t know which way she’d gone.

But she still had a whole team to rendezvous with, and hiding out in the desert was a poor way to find them. It might not seem like it in the moment, but she was literally choosing between her life or her cousin’s. He either died, or he’d come after her again.

“Nemari,” Dant called out. “Don’t you leave me like this. Help me!”

“The way you helped me when your father drugged me and locked me up?” she asked.

“That wasn’t my decision! I was just following orders.”

The croc sank its teeth into Dant’s arm then, eliciting a howl of pain from him. It didn’t sound much like those derisive laughs she was used to hearing from him when he got to drinking and decided to throw his weight around with the rank 0s in the family’s compound.

“What lies did they tell you?” she asked, still making no move to help. “And how far did you spread them?”

“No lies!” Dant insisted. He got his other arm around the croc’s neck and started squeezing. Its legs kicked out, but it didn’t have the angle to hit him like that. Dant might very well lose the arm, but it looked like he’d survive.

Of course, that didn’t account for the other two crocs still closing in on him, or for Nemari herself. “So some creep tells you he wants me, and the whole family hats up to drug and imprison me until he has time to come collect me? No one fought that decision? No one thought I was worth standing up for?”

“Against a fucking rank 20?” Dant would have laughed if he wasn’t spitting water out between each word. He got his free hand up onto the croc’s skull and started channeling broiling flames out through his palm. The monster flailed in place, its jaws loosening enough for him to reclaim the arm it had bitten.

There was a lot of blood, but the teeth marks didn’t go that deep. It might not even scar if he took a good healing potion to treat it. The croc wasn’t going to win, either, not before reinforcements arrived.

Nemari took control of a wrist-thick stream of water and coiled it around Dant’s neck. With a thought, she jerked him down under the water, extinguishing the fire he’d been using to cook the monster’s brain.

“You could have told me to go run and hide. At least then I’d have a chance. But no, Uncle Nat was all too eager to curry favor, and Dad was too spineless to stand up to him.” Nemari dragged Dant up out of the water to make sure he could hear her. “So tell me, ‘cuz,’ why should I let you live? What do I get besides a hassle from you and another batch of second or third cousins coming after me again tomorrow?”

The croc slithered out of Dant’s grip with some assistance from Nemari. It probably could have killed its prey if it turned around, but at that point, it was injured enough that it wanted nothing more to do with him. Even the other crocs had slowed down, perhaps sensing danger in approaching the human who’d fallen into their midst.

Dant couldn’t outmuscle the water holding him down, however. Nemari had him at her mercy, and other than her own guilty conscience, she couldn’t think of a good reason to let him live. Before she could commit to the kill, though, Cuizo leaped to his feet. Moving too fast to be tracked with the naked eye, he struck Nemari across the back of the head and sent her sprawling into the sand.

Dant waded out of the oasis and grabbed her by the throat. “You bitch,” he snarled, his voice hoarse. “You’re lucky they want you alive.”