The Fractured Tower

She’d lost track of exactly what was going on when someone had hit her on the head, but one fact remained that Nemari still had a tight hold on; without the oasis nearby, she was completely fucked. If she let them—whoever they were—move her away from this spot, it was over.

Reaching almost blindly for her soulprints, Nemari pushed anima into them. A startled cry made her eyes focus—Dant? What are you doing here?—as waves of flame poured out of her body, but whoever had grabbed onto her didn’t let go. Fingers dug into her shoulders and spun her sharply, then slammed her down into the sand.

The dull part of her mind still attached to the present grasped that fire wasn’t working, even though she wasn’t sure exactly why. Something shook itself loose, though, and the thought passed through her mind that if fire wasn’t enough to do the job, water might be took root. Water Bond was a powerful, complicated soulprint, and Nemari wasn’t up to using it with finesse at the moment.

So she pulled on an unseen source of water, one she knew was nearby, and a wave crashed down on her. It also hit the other two people nearby, knocking them from their feet. Something heavy and scaly slammed into her before flopping away, and a high-pitched scream filled the air.

Desperately, Nemari split the water around her, parting it to leave herself dry while it dragged everything else around her back into the depths of the oasis. Groggily, she sat up and looked around. The pieces were still muddled, but she knew someone had attacked her.

No, two people. Dant? And… someone else hit me on the back of the head. Fuck. Why are—Holy shit! That’s a big monster with a lot of teeth! I should do something to help.

Nemari’s scrambled brain reached for a solution, only to shudder to a grinding halt when another part woke up and reminded her that the two humans in the water had been attacking her just moments ago. They’d been trying to hurt her, and even if the reason why escaped her at the moment, she knew she’d done nothing to deserve it.

Besides, she had her own problems to deal with. The monster mixed up with her attackers wasn’t the only one. Two more of them had crawled up out of the water and were slowly making their way across the sand toward her. Nemari wasn’t exactly sure how she was supposed to handle that, but leaving seemed like a good start.

Part of her mind nagged at her, told her that her family was in trouble, and it was her duty to save them. Another part simply projected the bitterness of betrayal and shoved a handful of puzzle pieces to the front of her brain for her to put together. Lacking the time to work on that little project, the rest of her mind came to an agreement that the best thing she could do was run.

The next part of that plan was figuring out where to go, or at least what direction to go in. There was nothing but desert around her as far as she could see. Operating on the assumption that anywhere was better than here, Nemari started running in a random direction. Some dim part of her brain reminded her that there were monsters out in the desert, too, but since it couldn’t come up with a better alternative, she didn’t let that fact deter her.

* * *

Things started to clear up as night fell over the desert. Nemari was at least aware enough to know that her cousins had been after her, that there were more of them, and that she might have inadvertently sentenced the two who’d caught up with her to death by dragging them back into that monster-filled pool.

She hadn’t stuck around to witness their end though, so it was also completely possible that they were still alive and tracking her down even at that moment. With that thought in mind—and the possibility of encountering hostile monsters ever present—Nemari had found a small cave to hide in. It was really more of a hole in a ridge, the entrance partially buried by wind-driven sand, and it hadn’t been empty when she’d found it.

A few blasts of fire had killed the family of dog-sized scorpions living in there, and nothing else had shown up to claim the space yet. That gave Nemari a safe place to rest and recover, though she was quickly discovering that thirst was going to drive her out of hiding long before anything else.

Why did I think it was a good idea to use all my water fighting, but fail to refill my skin before leaving the oasis?

In her defense, being chased by two angry climbers and a handful of massive crocs with too many legs to be natural had a way of distracting her from the finer points of logistics, never mind the concussion she most likely suffered from. Her skull certainly hurt enough to support that theory, at least.

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She wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since she’d passed out. All she knew was that it was light when she fell asleep and light when she woke up, but she had a suspicion she might have missed an entire night in the process. That was probably a bad sign.

Nemari was attempting to knock something resembling a plan loose in her brain when the sand blocking most of the entrance into the cave suddenly ripped itself away. Daylight poured in, silhouetting a human figure standing between her and freedom.

She didn’t think. There was no time for that. Her cousins had found her, and she was trapped unless she could force her way past them. This time, she had no oasis to help her, and she knew she was no match for Dant physically. Even Cuizo could overpower her if she wasn’t careful to keep him far enough back.

Firebolts roared out, not the pitiful things she’d thrown at rank 0, but proper blasts of flame that erupted from her two at a time. Each one was big enough to engulf a grown man’s upper body, but she knew it was a distraction at best.

“Whoa!” a voice called out, both surprised and amused. “Easy there.”

A wave of cold swept across the cave, somehow causing her firebolts to dwindle in size and intensity even though it shouldn’t have worked that way. Nemari briefly felt her own anima start to fray and break down as her flames sputtered, then the magic completely shattered.

“Nemari!” another voice said. A second silhouette appeared next to the first one. “She’s hurt.”

“Might be a good idea to calm her down before you try to rush in,” a third voice added, this one female.

“Who… Odric? Rue?” That would make the one who’d dispelled her firebolts Sorin, then. “How… are you here?

“Wasn’t easy,” Rue told her. “Can we come in without you trying to fry us now?”

The truth of it was that Nemari could barely stay on her feet at this point. As soon as she’d realized she wasn’t being attacked, all the strength she’d marshaled had flowed right back out of her. Instead of answering, she simply sat down in place, then slowly toppled over.

Her last memory was some noises of surprise and concern, but things were too blurry for her to figure out who’d said what at that point.

* * *

“How is she?” Rue asked.

“Dehydrated, concussed,” Sorin said. “Bruises, scrapes, and cuts. Nothing we can’t fix.”

“She’s lucky we caught up to her so quickly,” Odric said softly as he sat next to the unconscious woman.

There wasn’t much luck involved. Nemari had made a hell of a scene at the portal hub. Pretty much everyone was still talking about the fight when Sorin and his team had arrived. It wasn’t hard to find a finger pointing toward the oasis south of the hub, nor was it difficult to follow the obvious set of tracks through the sand.

He was a bit curious about why there’d been three sets of tracks going into the oasis and only one leaving, but it wasn’t hard to take a guess the moment he’d seen those monsters swimming in the water. The curiosity mostly stemmed from the ‘how’ of it all, though he assumed Water Bond had played a significant part in things.

It obviously hadn’t been enough to save her, even if she had lived to walk away from the fight. Sorin doubted Nemari would have lasted the week on her own. More likely, she’d have died of dehydration or the next set of monsters to find her, whichever came first.

Well, lucky for her the next to thing to show up was us. Now we just need to get her back on her feet so she can tell us where Yoru and Vendis are.

That took the better part of the day, even with Sorin assisting Odric. Concussions were tricky things, especially when left untreated for so long. It was a delicate process coaxing Nemari back to health, but by the time night had fallen again, she was at least well enough to be moved.

Sorin swept their tracks clean behind them, and he doubted anyone would be following their trail that way. That didn’t preclude other methods of scouting, things like clairvoyance or high mobility and powerful senses. There was only so much he could do, though, so he tried not to worry about it too much. If someone hostile found them, he’d deal with it then.

Eventually, Nemari confirmed Sorin’s fears. Yoru had gone back to Floor 0 within an hour of the void behemoth appearing on their side of the liminal path. There really wasn’t a worse place he could have run off to, and there wasn’t much they could do to hunt him down at this point. That was an issue both because it was hard to enter into a partnership with the man if he couldn’t talk to him and because Yoru technically still owed them a heap of supplies for getting him to the Floor 4 portal hub.

“What’s our best option for getting in touch with him?” Sorin asked the rest of the team. “At this point, all I’ve got is to hang around the portal hubs and wait for him to come back through, or go to Floor 0 after him.”

“Those are probably the only two options,” Nemari said.

“Probably?” Sorin asked.

“Well… there might be one other thing. There’s a sort of communications hub the high families use. It would still require going back to Floor 0, but not necessarily marching up to the gates and banging on them until he comes out to talk to us.”

Going to Floor 0 was somewhat impractical, but the more Sorin considered the matter, the less he was worried about being intercepted by Samael or a group of his thugs at the exit to liminal space. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get back to climbing and increase his rank a few more times before he pushed into a confrontation.

“Let’s wait on that. We can leave messages at the portal hubs for him,” Sorin said. “If he hasn’t shown back up in a few days, we’ll go after him.”

“What do we do until then?” Rue asked.

“Well, we’re climbers, aren’t we? The three of you think you can handle some farming on this floor while I terrorize the monsters on Floor 4?”

“I could use some anima,” Nemari said. “New soulprints, too. I think I need to get something for healing, at least. Maybe a stamina booster, too.”

Sorin was wise enough to keep his mouth shut, no matter how strong the ‘I told you so’ bubbling up behind his lips was. He just nodded and promised to see if any of the local vendors had something available for her.