The Fractured Tower

Three days had passed since they’d split up, three days of solitary climbing that alternated between frustrating and nerve-wracking. Sorin was very aware that he was overpowered for the floor he was on, and for a number of different reasons, but he was equally aware that a single mistake could get him killed.

Working without backup was an entirely different experience than climbing with a team, and he couldn’t honestly say he was that comfortable with it. Fights were easy enough to avoid when he could outrun anything that came chasing after him, but Blind Sense was his primary method of ensuring he didn’t bite off more than he could chew, and it didn’t work very well on Floor 4.

The temptation to return to that spider warren on Floor 3 was strong, but the sheer quantity of monsters a floor up trumped the superior quality of what he’d found in those warrens. It might take him a hundred kills to equal what he’d collect from twenty or thirty here, but after he killed those hundred monsters, there were a hundred more waiting for him nearby.

Warbler frogs were dangerous both because of their numbers and because if they surprised him with their song, he’d be vulnerable until he got his defenses into place. Silver fin pikes were lone predators that swam the rivers, but they were huge and nearly undetectable until they breached the water in an attempt to swallow him whole.

A dozen varieties of massive fish and sneaky amphibians sat between those two extremes. Some fights went easy. Some were survived by the skin of Sorin’s teeth. Only his extensive emphasis on soulprints to increase his durability and stamina kept him going, and more than once, Counter Heal got him back in the fight quick enough to avoid an otherwise fatal blow.

But eventually, almost inevitably, his anima reserves reached the limit of rank 7. He pushed through to rank 8, his focus locked in on shaping his soulspace to reveal more of the mosaic around his sword. Checking in as soon as he was safe, Sorin was both pleased to see almost the entire sword revealed and annoyed to find that the edge of the black onyx gem was only barely visible.

He suspected he’d find another soulprint inside that gem, but he’d have to wait until rank 9 to find out. Even then, he reminded himself to temper his expectations. It was entirely possible that even if he did reveal a soulprint there, it might not become active until he’d grown enough to see the entire segment of the mosaic, which was looking more like a rank 12 or 13 milestone.

Sorin settled down for the evening in a glade about as far away from a river as he could get on this floor and steeled himself to do something he’d been both dreading and looking forward to. With a knife in hand, he carved a circle into the trunk of a tree. Nothing happened, and he breathed out a sigh.

Of course nothing happened. This isn’t the full sign.

He dragged the tip of the knife across the circle, creating the first horizontal line. Getting the spacing right had been the biggest challenge, but by now, he’d made enough of these that it didn’t take much thinking to do. Working quickly, he cut out the remaining pieces of the seven-tower sign, then stepped back and grasped the hilt of his sword.

The first sign of the void leaking out was all he would need to see before he destroyed the sign, but even after twenty minutes of watching and waiting, there was nothing. Hoping that meant things had calmed down and that the liminal path was ready to receive a visitor, he tentatively stretched a hand out to touch it.

Still nothing. Okay, one last step.

He’d chosen this place deliberately. If the void spilled out again, there were no feeder channels of water rushing forward to give up dozens or hundreds of monsters. He wasn’t planning on agitating things like that again, but he wanted to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

With a deep, fortifying breath, he reached into his soulspace and triggered Liminal Gateway. An instant later, he was standing in a small circle of silver dust surrounded by nothing but darkness. It was only five feet wide, barely enough for a single person. All of the exits he’d left scattered across the first four floors of the tower were gone.

In their place, maybe twenty feet away, was a small, narrow, winding strip of silver that disappeared into the void. Getting to it would entail some amount of risk, and Sorin could remember exactly how painful it had been the last time he’d left his path, even for a moment. Back then, he hadn’t been resistant to the void, however. It was entirely possible he could make the jump unharmed now.

He wasn’t keen to try. The odds of him venturing too deep into liminal space and never getting back out seemed prohibitively high. The path he’d been forging one stop at a time was already gone, and Sorin wasn’t sure if that was the result of the void coming down on him or if Samael had done something else to modify it.

He already proved he could get to my path from wherever he starts. He could very well have just gone from one sign to the next out in the tower, destroying them all until I had nothing left. Or the void could have done it from this side. I’m not really sure which is more likely.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Whatever the cause, the last thing Sorin intended to do was jump a void-filled chasm to take a strange, unknown path that might go nowhere or lead to Samael directly. If the tower itself wanted him to go that way, then it could damn well connect him to it directly.

It was enough to know that liminal space had returned to some semblance of ordinary and that he’d lost all his old connections. That might have concerned him if he’d cared about any of them, but other than his missing backdoor into Floor 0, none were important. Even then, it was just a layer of hassle as he’d need to use the main portal while bringing nothing to tax with him so that he could establish a new sign there.

There didn’t seem to be much point in that as long as Samael was still lurking in the background. In the end, he was just going to keep farming more anima no matter what, so once he was assured that Liminal Gateway still worked, he returned to Floor 4, destroyed the sign, and got back to work.

* * *

The one thing Sorin could say for Floor 4 was that there was no shortage of edible monsters. Fish was far from his favorite meal, but a climber couldn’t afford to be picky, and he’d lived on worse for longer. With water so abundant as well, the only real issue with an extended climb on the floor was the fact that it was impossible to get fully dry.

He could deal with that for a week or two, and so it wasn’t until day ten of his extended solo climb that he finally got around to returning to the portal hub. The distance between ranks continued to grow, and the extra week he’d spent killing everything he could reasonably expect to triumph over hadn’t been enough for him to push up to rank 9, much to his disappointment.

With any luck, the rest of his team had reached the summit of rank 4 and were ready to invest the anima they’d gained into a few new soulprints, not that he had anything for them. He’d found a dozen or more, but nothing anyone was likely to want. Maybe Soothing Touch, he corrected himself. The F-rank healing soulprint was undoubtedly his most valuable loot.

“Where’re your friends at?” the woman running the small inn asked when Sorin walked in.

That was the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. They were supposed to already be here and waiting for him. “I was hoping they’d have left a message for me,” he said. “But I’m guessing not.”

“This ain’t a courier house,” she said flatly. “I serve food. I give you a dry place to sleep. If you’ve got coin.”

“I guess I’m looking for a hot meal, preferably one that’s no parts fish.”

She snorted at that. “On Floor 4? You know almost all the fish eaten on Floor 0 comes through here, right?”

“Sure, but you could easily get something imported from a different floor. I can’t be the only climber who’s sick to death of eating fish here.”

“Hmm. I could, maybe, but not today. It’s fish stew or nothing,” she told him.

Sighing, Sorin placed three danirs on the table. At least it’s hot.

* * *

Floor 3 proved to be slightly more profitable to venture down to. The market was small, but it existed, which put it a step ahead of Floor 4. Unfortunately, Sorin didn’t get much of a chance to browse. He was in the middle of stocking up on foodstuffs that would take being stuffed into a leather backpack and ignored for weeks on end when he noticed a familiar-looking man limping through the street.

It was the peg-leg that caught Sorin’s eye. That’s Nemari’s uncle. What’s he doing here?

The man looked a lot rougher than the last time Sorin had seen him, especially since he was missing another limb now. That was a new development. He’d definitely had both arms when they’d fought; Sorin could vividly remember being repeatedly punched by them.

“God damn this sand!” the man all but spat as his peg-leg sunk in several inches.

“I told you I’d handle this. You don’t need to be here,” the man walking next to him said.

“And I told you that it’s my son who found that little traitor. I’m not going to sit there and just wait for someone else to find out what happened to him.”

“You could at least switch to the model with the flat plate,” another man said. This one was younger than the other two by a generation, and Sorin thought he recognized him as the mousy mage who’d gotten clobbered before the fight had even started.

“I hate that damn thing,” Nemari’s uncle grumbled. “It pinches my stump.”

The trio strode off, and the grocer handed Sorin his food. They’d both been watching the procession, along with half a dozen other people in the area. “Don’t see that too often,” Sorin said, fishing for a bit of gossip.

“Not normally, but they’ve been coming through here all week. Actually, it’s been more like two weeks, but the guy with the missing leg just showed up recently.”

“Yeah? Who’re they looking for?”

The grocer eyed him suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

“Just in case there’s a reward,” Sorin lied. He was pretty sure he knew the answer anyway.

“No reward, at least not anything I’ve heard about. Someone told me the other day that it’s an internal family matter.”

“They’re probably not going to be happy about outside interference then. Damn. Could have been some easy money.”

“If only. I used to be a tracker myself before I retired. I bet I could find whoever they’re looking for, but I know better than to set my foot on a trap rune, you know?”

“Don’t I just,” Sorin said with a fake laugh. “Well, not my problem, I guess.”

But it very much was. Now I know why they never came to Floor 4. Nemari’s family is still lurking around the portal hub, trapping them here.

As difficult as it was becoming to keep track of the rest of his team, he was starting to think that a few soulprints for finding people might need to be bumped up in priority. “Speaking of tracking,” he said, “you know if anyone around here is selling any soulprints along those lines? My team’s tracker quit on us a month ago, and I’ve been thinking about just doing it myself rather than hiring someone new.”

“Oh, sure!” the grocer said, warming to the topic. “Now, it depends how you want to go about it, but there’s a few basic F-rank soulprints that are always handy.”

Sorin already knew that. He’d been asking if there were any merchants selling those kinds of soulprints, but he bit back a sigh and let the grocer ramble for a bit. Eventually, the man would get to the point. He hoped.