The Fractured Tower

Fighting with monsters instead of against them was a surreal experience. Never in forty years had Sorin ever done anything remotely like this, but at this point, he was desperate enough to win that he accepted it without hesitation.

Of course, Samael had been holding back for the first minute of their battle. He’d matched Sorin blow for blow, only escalating if necessary. Whatever he was trying to figure out, he’d been buying himself the time he needed to do it.

Now something was happening that Samael didn’t understand. That inspired a more volatile reaction, which took the form of the man lashing out with magic. A wave of raw force plowed through the earth in front of Samael, snuffing out the pack of rodents in a single spell. That didn’t stop the gnats from condensing on the barrier Samael was still holding, now massing around his face at the exact right time to block him from seeing the gold-feather eagle swooping down with talons extended.

Though it looked like a bird made entirely of metal, the monster was named for its color, not its composition. Gold was soft. Talons made of it would fail against even the bare flesh of any half-decent climber. The metal of a gold-feather eagle was something else, though, something biometallic that became harder than steel when the monster ran anima through its own body.

That metal tore through Samael’s barrier with ease but missed hitting its target as he effortlessly shifted his head a few degrees to one side. At the same time, Sorin triggered another Speed Burst and rushed forward, his sword leading. Much like Sorin himself, though, Samael did not need his eyes to see. That was how he’d dodged the eagle’s attack, after all, and it enabled him to avoid Sorin’s as well.

An aura of pure heat rolled off Samael, burning through the gnats and igniting the grass around him. The fire immediately spread across the savanna, growing like it was a living creature. “Enough of this,” Samael said. “The tower itself is against me? Fine. Unlike you, it is a being of reason. It ought to know better than to interfere, but once I kill you, it will have no choice but to support me. I’m its only hope.”

Gone now was the Samael who was content to match Sorin. A wave of monsters was closing around them, only partially stymied by the ever-growing circle of flames. It would be there in seconds, and then Samael would be forced to deal with them. He needed to kill Sorin first if he really thought that would get the tower off his back.

Maybe it would, but I’m not giving you the chance to find out. I may not be as strong, but I can hold you back for a few seconds.

There was no simply triggering Speed Burst now. Sorin kept a constant flow of anima going to it, uncaring of the cost. He needed to be able to keep up with Samael, or he’d die without ever knowing what hit him.

Still Winter billowed out, spreading and cutting off the fire from reaching Sorin. He had no doubt that it was alive and under Samael’s control with the way it moved to perfectly defend him from the approaching monsters and cut off any route Sorin might use to escape.

At the same time, a beam of force so dense that it was solid black at the core lanced out of Samael’s finger. Sorin summoned Force Weaver, layering wall after wall simultaneously. The force beam punched through them all without slowing, marking it as a B-rank ability.

It might not have slowed down, but it was considerably weakened by the time it reached Sorin. He took the hit on his shoulder as he tried to dodge, and that spun him around twice before he hit the dirt. Sorin rolled with the momentum, coming to his feet facing the wrong direction and blindly slashing in an arc behind him.

Samael, who’d chased after his force beam, brought his sword up parallel to his body to parry. It took a second hand pressed against the flat of the blade to hold against the strike, which Sorin had spun with and put his whole body into.

Force Weaver condensed around them, striking at Samael from every direction. He wasn’t some two-bit assassin, though, and he didn’t fall into meat cubes to scatter at Sorin’s feet. His own force magic appeared to defend him, strong enough to stop Sorin’s attack, overwhelm it, and turn it back on him.

Still Winter and Iron Bulwark together kept Sorin alive, but not unbloodied. Counter Heal triggered, sealing the most egregious of the wounds. It wasn’t strong enough to bring him back to full health, but it had done what it needed to: keep Sorin in the fight.

One second had passed since Sorin had activated Speed Burst and gone all out. The eagle was back, and it had brought a mate with it this time. The monsters blocked by the flames were racing around it, a wave of flesh aiming to get inside the circle before it closed.

Even the fire itself wasn’t just a defense. It was closing in on the two men, and Samael had already proven it wouldn’t hurt him. It just might be strong enough to cook Sorin, though. Still Winter could only do so much, and the more the fire pushed against it, the quicker it drained Sorin’s anima.

Sorin wasn’t going to win a physical confrontation. His only advantage was his slightly higher skill with a sword. Samael outclassed him both physically and especially magically. The tower’s reinforcements were arriving, but too slow.

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How are your mental defenses, though?

Using Limited Telepathic Bond as a springboard to boost the raw power of the spell, Sorin free cast a nasty little C-rank soulprint called Mind Scream. All it did was send a psychic shock at the target that tried to overwhelm their senses. It was good for disrupting concentration and dazing someone who wasn’t prepared for it. Any good climber would have passive soulprints to protect their minds against outside intrusion.

Those soulprints didn’t really start appearing until C-rank, though, which meant they’d be relatively rare in a tower that was locked to Floor 24. Oh, sure, if anyone would have them, it was Samael. But a C-rank defense didn’t make a climber impervious to a C-rank attack, especially not when Sorin was boosting it with another soulprint.

Samael flinched.

It was only for a moment, a tenth of a second at most, but it was a window, and at the speed they were fighting at, it was more than long enough. Sorin lunged, Force Weaver building itself into a wall of kinetic energy curved around the back of his body to throw him forward even faster. Samael recovered in time to see the attack coming, but he wasn’t in time to do anything about it.

Two feet of blue-tinged steel rammed itself through Samael’s heart. The sword ripped out Samael’s back, chunks of flesh and bone mixed with a fountain of blood. Then Sorin took the hilt in both hands and twisted.

Or at least he started to. Samael’s backhand was so fast that, even under the effects of Speed Burst, Sorin didn’t see it until it had already hit him. He went down, face first and hard enough to leave an impression in the dirt. Still Winter fizzled around him, and his perception fell back into normal time.

That broke something, he thought woozily.

He couldn’t see out of his right eye anymore, and his left was so blurry that he might as well have been fully blind. Three seconds—that was how long he’d lasted going all out. His only solace was that he’d put a big fucking hole in Samael’s chest before he’d gone down.

It wouldn’t be enough to kill him, not on its own. Powerful climbers survived worse than that on a regular day. But then, there were still a couple hundred monsters coming for Samael, and Sorin wasn’t dead yet.

Better move if I want to keep it that way.

He still had some anima left. Not much, but enough. Horizon Walker showed him what his eyes couldn’t: Samael standing over him, tearing the sword free and throwing it into the burning field of grass. He turned his blood-covered hand in Sorin’s direction, his tattered aura tightening as anima surged through his body.

Speed Burst.

Sorin almost dodged the force beam this time, if only because Samael hadn’t been expecting him to be able to move at all. The spell hit him in the stomach, hard enough to rip him in two pieces, and Sorin felt the lifecatcher hanging from his neck trigger.

It bought him a fraction of a second, but that was enough to slip aside. The spell dug into the dirt, boring a hole down to the bedrock, then shattering that, too. It swept sideways, plowing up dirt, clay, and rock as it chased after Sorin.

There was no keeping ahead of the spell, not when all Samael had to do was shift the direction of his hand to point at Sorin. Force Weaver wasn’t strong enough to fully block it, either, and Sorin couldn’t afford to take even a partial hit. His only option was to charge Samael, to get inside his arm’s reach.

Then a lion the size of two carriages set up side-by-side paced through the circle of fire. Loose flames clung to its mane and its flank. Fire swirled around its paws with each step. Massive golden eyes locked on Samael, and its lips peeled back to reveal fangs the length of Sorin’s forearm as a low growl reverberated across the savanna.

Immediately, Samael abandoned offense to protect himself. The earth rose into a wall of stone two feet thick between man and monster. A skin of pure force magic appeared to reinforce the back side, and a layer of ice started to grow across that.

The lion crashed through it like it wasn’t there. One paw flashed out, faster even than the backhand Samael had delivered to Sorin just a second earlier. It caught Samael on the shoulder and tore down, ripping his arm off and shearing through every single one of the ribs on that side.

For the first time, Samael screamed. Raw, unstructured kinetic power rippled out, picking Sorin up and hurling him backward fifty feet to land amidst the inferno. Thermal Insulation grabbed hold of his anima reservoir and tried to drain it dry, but Sorin intervened and manually rejected the soulprint. Better to burn a bit than to use up the last of my anima, he thought as he leaped to his feet.

Once he had a moment to get his bearings, he realized that Samael had lost control of the flames, anyway. They were still hot, still burning, but now it was just a normal grass fire. And that wasn’t enough to stop the monsters. They rushed through, trampling the grass underfoot and snuffing out much of the fire with their passage.

Samael saw them coming, saw the lion already in front of him. He no doubt saw Sorin circling the fight, preparing a final blow to end the battle once and for all. He was desperate now, overwhelmed. The tower had made its decision abundantly clear.

There was a wrinkle in his anima, there and gone so quickly that Sorin wouldn’t have noticed it except for one thing. Samael vanished. It wasn’t invisibility or anything like that, not as far as Sorin could tell. It could be teleportation, but that was an A-rank soulprint, and even if Samael could free cast with every last scrap of anima in his soulspace, Sorin just didn’t think that was enough.

Then he realized the truth. Samael had done the same thing Sorin himself could do. He’d fled the battle using Liminal Gateway. Though there was nothing solid enough at ground level to carve the sign, he didn’t need to. All he needed was something solid enough to anchor the magic to, and he’d already split the ground open to the bedrock.

Once Sorin knew to look, he could feel the anchor below his feet. Samael had gotten away, and judging by how the lion simply swung its head around to look at Sorin, it looked like there was nothing the tower could do to catch him.

But I can.

Sorin stooped to pick up his sword. Then he locked eyes with the lion and said, “I’ll bring him back. Wait for me.”

He pulled anima from the sword’s reservoir and wove it into a healing spell, one barely strong enough to keep him on his feet at the moment. Then, reaching into his own soulspace, Sorin stepped through the gateway and into liminal space.

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