The Fractured Tower

Sorin didn’t recognize the path in front of him, which made sense because he’d stepped onto Samael’s. It was significantly larger, more of a tangled web of trails than the winding line that Sorin’s looked like. Samael himself wasn’t visible, but, surprisingly, that was fine.

Candle in the Void told him exactly where his fellow climber was. He hadn’t been able to see it in the tower, but out here, Samael was a beacon. His mosaic was more than twice the size of Sorin’s, which made it even easier to find. Idly, Sorin wondered if Samael had the same ability, if he was looking over his shoulder at the blue speck of light that had appeared behind him.

Samael hadn’t fled through liminal space to somewhere else in the tower. No, he’d fled into the void itself, building a path for him to run and breaking it down behind him. That felt risky to Sorin, the kind of desperate gambit a man who was completely out of options would cling to.

At the same time that thought occurred to Sorin, the node leading back to the trial broke away from the rest of Samael’s path. Silver dust fell into the void, rolling over itself in its rush to disappear. The node started to drift toward Samael while the rest of his path disintegrated behind it, but it was too slow to catch him on its own.

Even here, the tower is doing what it can to help me kill Samael. It won’t stand for his betrayal.

It had not escaped Sorin’s notice that the tower had been a lot more ambiguous about its position prior to Samael verbally announcing his plans to escape. It was like that was the point of no return for him.

Could I let him go? He’s going to have to come back into the tower at some point. It could just kill him then.

But it could also change its mind. Sorin had no idea what motivated the tower to do what it did. All he knew was that, right now, in this moment, the tower wanted Samael dead, and it was in Sorin’s best interest to see that through.

Sorin called up his own silver dust and started forging a new path. This one wasn’t connected to his main branch, but even if it caused his to decay like Samael’s had, it was worth the price. The dust came to his call, and the road between him and Samael appeared out of nothing. It rolled out, as fast as Sorin himself could run, always filling in the void in front of his foot before he could finish his step.

Halfway there, Sorin realized he wasn’t going to have enough dust to complete the road. But when he thought about it, he didn’t really need the path to be three feet thick. He thinned it down to one foot and kept running. When that still wasn’t enough, the trail narrowed again.

Now only four inches wide, Sorin had to take care he didn’t fall off. Walking a tightrope was within his capabilities, but he wasn’t at his best. His foot slipped, but he willed the trail to widen enough to catch his heel before he toppled over into the void. Saved for the moment, he didn’t even break his stride to reset his balance.

It took two minutes to catch up to that green mosaic trying desperately to escape into the void, two minutes of aching limbs, being too dizzy to see straight, and of lungs struggling to breathe in whatever it was that allowed him to breathe out in liminal space. It was funny what his mind went to when he had so much more important things to think of.

Samael was even worse off than Sorin, though, and eventually he gave up the chase. A line of dust the thickness of a string stretched back behind him, connected to that single node slowly drifting after the two men. Samael stared back at it for just a moment, his face as devoid of emotion as it always seemed to be, but the façade was cracking.

No words were exchanged; none were needed. The instant Sorin reached the circle of sand Samael stood on, the battle resumed. Samael had burned up most of his anima keeping himself alive, but he hadn’t had time to truly heal himself yet. His ribs were still in pieces. Tendons that had partially reformed held it all together. More blood poured out with every heartbeat. His heart itself was only still going thanks to Samael’s magic controlling it. Regenerating blood fast enough to keep himself from passing out had drastically slowed down how much of his attention and anima Samael could devote to the actual healing.

It wasn’t much of a fight. Sorin was on his last legs, but at least he was in one piece. All the speed and precision Samael had displayed was absent now. His spells were weak, easy to predict and easy to dodge. It was only Sorin’s own exhaustion that gave Samael a chance.

They struggled weakly, blades ringing out into the void and spells powered by meager droplets of what had once been a vast ocean of power. The darkness watched them the whole time. Its presence bore down on the two men like a physical weight draped over their shoulders.

So Sorin wasn’t surprised when the first drop of inky blackness spilled down into the dust. He knew Samael saw it, too, but they both ignored it. They had no other choice. The instant one of them lost focus, the other would kill him. And so the voidling formed.

Unlike the tower, it didn’t have an agenda in this battle. It only saw two sources of anima in front of it, and its instincts drove it to throw itself at the stronger of the two. Sorin would have laughed at Samael’s misfortune if he’d had the energy, but he saw a second voidling dribbling out of the darkness to splash into the arena.

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“I’ll take you with me,” Samael snarled. “Help me kill these and let me go, or we both go down together.”

Sorin didn’t have to think about it. He knew what Samael’s word was worth. Letting him go now just meant dealing with him later. “No.”

The second voidling finished forming and surged at the two of them. This one almost seemed to lack legs, moving more like a slime than an animal. That didn’t slow it down, and even as Samael threw himself on Sorin, it reached the fray.

Both voidlings were locked onto Samael, fighting each other as much as him in their attempt to eat his anima, but physical proximity was enough for Sorin to feel the effects. It was like sandpaper to his soul, but he had to ignore it. Samael’s plan was abundantly clear now. He’d given up on survival and was trying to shove Sorin into the void. If that meant he fell too, that was fine with him.

He pressed forward, his one remaining shoulder cinched tightly against Sorin’s cheek and his fingers hooked around Sorin’s breastplate. There was no breaking the clench, even ignoring the two voidlings crawling all over them.

Sorin staggered backward a step. More dust rolled out of him to catch his foot just before he fell into the darkness. Samael shoved again, his teeth set into a rictus grin and a wild light in his eyes. “You. Won’t. Stop. Me,” he ground out.

Another push, another step back, and Sorin was running out of path-stuff. He’d used too much to tether the node behind him, and it was much too slow giving it back as it advanced. Void Strider had its limits; Sorin had found them. The next push was going to send them both over the edge.

He didn’t know how long he held them there, balanced on a knife’s edge and struggling not to tip while two shards of living void devoured them alive. All he knew was that he couldn’t give another inch. Samael was weakening faster than Sorin. He couldn’t push again. It was nothing but weight driving against him now.

Sorin’s whole body quivered with the strain. His mind screamed with the pain of the void eating him. Compared to that, the injuries Samael had dealt him seemed inconsequential.

I can do this. Just… hold on, a little longer. Push him back.

But he couldn’t. Wanting it wasn’t enough to make it real. Sorin wasn’t even sure Samael was still alive, but it didn’t matter. Sorin couldn’t shift his weight to the side. His leg collapsed, and he fell backward. The void reached up eagerly to swallow them both.

The node slid into place, locking onto the arena just as Sorin’s strength gave out. He fell onto his back, and Samael slammed into his chest. The voidlings crawled over him, reaching for Sorin, for their next meal.

Sorry, tower. You’re not going to thank me for bringing back extra visitors.

Sorin triggered Liminal Gateway and pulled all of them back into the trial, where the massive lion loomed over them. It gave a single, almost disdainful flick of its paw, hurling Samael away and flinging the voidlings into the air.

Sorin didn’t see what happened after that. He was at the end of his strength. But he was pretty sure those two voidlings had a rough few seconds before their existence abruptly ended. His last thought was that he was going to be next.

* * *

A lot of things had surprised Sorin in his life, but the fact that he was still alive to open his eyes currently topped the list. He hurt everywhere, both from the wounds that hadn’t quite healed while he was out and from the soulburn the voidlings had inflicted on him. He’d only caught the edge of that, and Void Resistance had protected him, but sustained contact with a voidling for a handful of minutes wasn’t something anyone escaped unscathed.

“I’m alive,” he whispered. “Hah. Haha. How about that?”

He was still lying right where he’d fallen, with the same blue sky overhead. The only thing that had changed was the smudges of smoke from the grass fire were gone. Even the sun was in the same place, which told him he hadn’t been out for more than a few minutes.

That didn’t make sense, though. His physical wounds had healed too much for that. Blood of the Mountain was a powerful soulprint, but it was still only D-rank. It wasn’t capable of this. Did the tower heal me?

His stomach’s rumbling told him the truth. He hadn’t been out for a few minutes. It had been a full day and a few minutes. More than that, he finally recognized what had woken him. A monster approached him, its gait slow and measured, like it was unsure if he was dangerous or merely a meal.

Sorin watched it with Horizon Walker. It resembled some sort of hyena, except six feet tall at the shoulder and dripping saliva that burned the grass where it fell. It stopped twenty feet away and waited, though Sorin couldn’t say what exactly it was waiting for. All he knew for sure was that it was better to face trouble on his feet. He scrambled upright, scooping up his sword as he did so.

In front of him, written in twisted green steel—the remains of Samael’s own tower sword—were the words, ‘One day.’ There was no explanation beyond that.

A truce? Sorin looked up again. If he factored in the time the fight had taken, there might be a few minutes left from the time he’d returned. The witches had given him until sunrise. The tower itself had given him twenty-four hours to recover.

Those twenty-four hours were apparently up. The message at his feet flashed, then dissolved into smoke that caught in the wind and blew apart. At that exact same instant, the monster that had been watching him scrambled forward.

It was too busy watching his sword to pay attention to anything else, though, and it practically killed itself when it rammed into a web of sharpened force. The sword stroke to cut its head off was merely a formality.

Anima flowed into Sorin’s soulspace, making him wince all over again. Let’s see. I’m trapped in a trial by myself. I have no idea if the rest of my team is even alive. My soul is injured. I have basically no supplies. The lion guardian of this place outweighs me by about six thousand pounds and is strong enough to tear a rank 30 climber a new asshole.

Sorin tried to anchor a Liminal Gateway to the bedrock like Samael had done. It didn’t take hold. And I guess the tower doesn’t want me skipping out of here. Things are pretty much back to normal then. But hey, Samael’s dead. Sweet, sweet victory. Maybe now I can climb in peace.

Hefting his sword and with a grin spreading across his lips, Sorin started walking.

End of Book 2

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