The Fractured Tower

Samael definitely wasn’t at full strength. While Sorin hadn’t personally seen what his aura looked like after fighting a voidling, Rue had described the damage to him. He recognized the symptoms. That didn’t mean Samael wasn’t still powerful, just that if and when it came down to a fight, Sorin might have a chance of holding his own.

Then again, I’m not exactly in top shape myself. Give me a few hours and a good meal, then we’ll talk.

The Citadel had taken its toll, and his team had pushed hard to reach the door. That was after coming directly off what had been quite possibly the most difficult fight he’d had yet in the red tower—a floor guardian and a displaced triton that belonged on Floor 20, not Floor 9. Their infrequent breaks had kept them going, but they weren’t a substitute for a few days of downtime.

“What’s there to talk about?” Sorin asked.

Every minute he bought tipped the scales a little bit closer in his favor. Samael had soul damage, and that wasn’t going to heal up in hours or days. If, by some miracle, they could have an hour-long conversation without coming to blows, Sorin would be much closer to full strength while Samael would be almost exactly as strong as he was right this second.

“Have you figured out what the tower wants from us yet?” Samael asked. “Surely you’ve started to put the clues together.”

“I’m still working on it. The void infestation feels like it’s pretty central to the whole thing. You’ve seen the other towers in the Antechamber?”

“Years ago,” Samael said. “I’ve been… stuck.”

“The Void Wall. Your fault, I assume?”

“Yes,” Samael admitted with a growl of frustration. “I made a mistake years ago, much like that one you made on Floor 4. Only there wasn’t anyone to clean up after me. The void got in, and it did what it does.”

That was the most emotion Sorin had heard from the man yet, though admittedly, they were only on their second conversation ever. Must be a sore spot for him. Let’s move on instead of poking it.

“It’s not just here in the red tower, though. I don’t know what it looked like a few years ago, but that indigo tower is showing void from top to bottom now. I’m assuming the tower wants that addressed. I just don’t know why it sent me here instead.”

“Exactly,” Samael agreed. His eyes lingered on Sorin, specifically on the spot where two eyebrows used to grow. “I’m sorry. What happened to your hair?”

“Baptism of fire to remove the stink from a bunch of undead gunk I got covered with yesterday,” Sorin explained. “It was preferable to suffering through the smell.”

Samael seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding and moving on. “What is your theory on why you’re here instead of where you’re needed?”

“I don’t know. The tower gave me a cryptic message, most of which doesn’t make a lot of sense without a bunch of context I’m lacking. What’s your theory?”

The calamity spreads. Darkening void encroaches. Hold to your oath. The way becomes corrupted. Champion of Light. Memories broken and forged anew.

Sorin could clearly remember each line delivered to him by a trio of witches. Some of it was obvious now. The void was spreading through the tower; presumably that was the calamity. Sorin had always known that he was missing part of his memories, but he’d yet to see them ‘forged anew.’ He could only hope that meant he’d get back what had happened at the end of the last floor of his original tower someday.

It might have been arrogant to think, but he assumed he was the Champion of Light mentioned. If not, then he wasn’t sure what the tower was trying to accomplish with him. There also wasn’t any reason to assume there was only one champion. It made just as much sense that his entire team were all champions. Maybe Samael was, too. There could be dozens of them scattered across the towers.

What he didn’t know a damn thing about was what his oath was. That made it pretty hard to hold to it, but the tower wasn’t smiting him where he stood, so he figured he was doing a good enough job so far.

The only line left that he couldn’t guess at was the one about the way becoming corrupted. Sorin didn’t know what the way even was. The corruption was probably a consequence of the void infestation, but beyond that, only time would tell.

“The tower sent us here because it can’t send us to the source of the problem. It can only move us to the bottom of one of its other incarnations, and the process resets us back to rank 0. If it can’t send us there as rank 100s who are capable of actually fighting the void, there’s no point in sending us at all. Rank 0s would just be killed as soon as they set foot into the tower.”

That made a disturbing amount of sense. Even Floor 0 wasn’t entirely immune to voidlings encroaching on civilization, though attacks were rare enough to be noteworthy when they did. The indigo tower could be a deathtrap that saw any climbers sent to its base devoured before they even woke up.

“Maybe, but that just raises new questions. Namely, if the tower has absolute control over everything happening, why is it incapable of sending us where we need to be at full power? Also, is it even one tower? Are the seven towers distinct entities, some kind of siblings trying to rescue their sick brother?”

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“The churches back home would spit blood just hearing you say that,” Samael said. “I would like to say that your question is one for the philosophers to debate, with no bearing on everyday life, but I am afraid it is all too relevant. We need to solve this riddle.”

Samael said ‘we,’ but Sorin heard ‘I.’ Any partnership they formed would be temporary and would almost certainly end with Samael attempting to kill Sorin. That was what Samael did, after all. He used people, and he discarded them when he was through. He’d made almost no effort to hide that. Anyone who’d been forced to deal with the Black Hellion knew what kind of man he was.

Even if Sorin hadn’t been aware of what he was dealing with, all he needed to do was think back to that fraction of a second when Samael had appeared in front of him. It was entirely possible the rest of his team was dead. Surviving a cave-in required a set of soulprints that they just didn’t have. Odric probably had the best odds of living through it and digging himself out, but if the rest hadn’t been flung far enough away to avoid being buried, they would likely die before anyone could rescue them.

Keep him talking, Sorin reminded himself. The longer this goes on, the better. Besides, I need to know what he’s figured out about all of this mess.

“I don’t suppose you’ve figured out how to do that,” Sorin said. “So far, all I’ve got is to keep climbing and revealing more of this mosaic, and it hasn’t exactly shown me much beyond the center circle.”

“It hasn’t been informative lately, no.”

“So, you already know everything I’ve figured out,” Sorin said slowly. “And other than your theory about the tower sending us here instead of to the site of the infestation, you’re not really ahead of me.”

“Do you have an alternative theory?”

“Maybe it chose climbers who cleared their towers because it proved our competency. Maybe it set us back to rank 0 so that it could integrate all these void-related soulprints into us via this mosaic in our soulspace.”

“Then why not do it when we are rank 100?”

“I guess it can’t,” Sorin said. “But that runs into the same problem your theory has. We can say it doesn’t do something because it doesn’t have the power to, but that doesn’t explain why not.”

“Nor does it confirm whether we are experiencing seven aspects of a single tower, or seven separate towers connected to each other in some way.”

“Basically, the only thing we know is that the tower wants us to destroy the void wherever it encroaches, and that it can, in some limited fashion, move us between towers.”

“And that we can also move between towers,” Samael said.

Sorin blinked. “We can?”

“What did you think the Liminal Gateway was, just a shortcut to make monster hunting more efficient as you climb? It is our doorway to the world between the towers. Go deep enough, and you’ll see the next tower in the chain off in the darkness.”

Sorin had suspected it was possible, but he hadn’t explored liminal space the same way Samael apparently had. In his defense, Samael had ten years on him and was further along unlocking all the weird stuff the tower was equipping them with.

“Wait. If you can reach the other towers, why are you still here?” Sorin asked. The Void Wall was blocking Samael from advancing through the red tower, but if he could just jaunt over to the yellow tower or whatever, he could simply resume climbing there. It was what Sorin would have done in Samael’s position, though in his case, it would have been for the purpose of growing strong enough to return and clean up his mess.

Somehow, he doubted Samael would come back if he had a way to escape the consequences of his mistake. That just didn’t seem in character for a man whose defining personality trait seemed to be absolute selfishness.

“I can see the next tower. I did not say I could reach it.”

“Why not?” Sorin asked.

“There is not enough of… whatever the substance that makes the roads is. It can only carry you so far before you run out, and I am not foolish enough to leap into the void to try reaching the rest of the way. That’s why we are here.”

What? “Sorry, I’m not following.”

“Given our relationship with the tower, is there any doubt that a proving ground such as this would reward us with something that enhances our ability to handle the void? Defeating the guardian here should make me better able to withstand the journey.”

Sorin couldn’t say he was surprised at Samael’s goals. He’d smacked his head against the wall that was Floor 25 for years. Now he was looking to go around it. It was not lost on Sorin that it had been both of them who needed to solve the riddle of the tower, but only Samael who needed to reap the rewards of the trial to become stronger.

Ten minutes, maybe, since we started talking. It’s not enough, but I think it might be all I’m going to get.

“And where do I feature in this plan of yours?” Sorin asked.

“Stay out of my way, and I’ll let you live,” Samael told him. “I don’t need you to overcome a Floor 10 proving ground. You still hold value as a backup should the tower fail to reward me with what I need to escape.”

“See, that sounds a lot like you won’t need me if you do get what you want from this place,” Sorin said. “And I’m pretty sure I know what you do to people who are no longer useful to you.”

“You reached the pinnacle of your tower. I know you’re a smart man. You can do the calculations, figure out the odds. Your best bet at living through the day is to stay out of my way and hope that what the tower gives me doesn’t enable me to walk the silver road to the next tower.”

“And if it does?”

“Then I’ll be at my weakest, having just fought my way through the whole proving ground. Though, let’s be honest, it won’t make a difference in the outcome of a fight between the two of us.”

There it was, the second bit of emotion Sorin could find in Samael. He was angry about the Void Wall, probably not guilty that he’d caused it, but just upset that it had stood in his way for so long. And he enjoyed hurting people.

Except for a few months when he’d first arrived in the red tower, it had probably been decades since Samael had stood next to anyone and been worried about the outcome of a fight. He’d climbed to the top of the green tower, and Sorin knew full well how few people ever got that far. He wondered if Samael had betrayed his team at the end, killing them all so he alone could claim whatever reward he thought was waiting for him.

Were you so desperate that you even accepted this piece of shit as one of your champions? Sorin asked the tower. There were really no other choices? It was Samael or nothing? Only one of us is walking out of here, so you’d better figure out who you like more, because I could sure use some help. Tower, can you hear me?

It was as close to a prayer as Sorin had ever come. It could very well be the last one he ever offered up. “Seems to me if it won’t make a difference,” he said, drawing his sword, “then there’s no point in putting it off.”

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