The Fractured Tower

Urd took a moment to consider the question. “I do not believe so. Recruitment implies that you would be serving under someone else. We are not asking you to do that.”

“No, you’re asking me to take Samael’s place.”

“Essentially, yes. Whatever his personal motivations, Lord Samael kept the tower stable. With him gone, things have begun to unravel. You’re the only one capable of stepping into his place and taking up the reins.”

Sorin’s initial instinct was to recoil from the idea. Samael had been a rotten core wrapped in sadism, and no part of Sorin wanted to be compared to the man. The Black Hellions might have stabilized Floor 0, but it was the stabilization of tyranny, of power enforced on those who had none to resist it.

The only good Samael had done for this tower was his program to create climbers capable of holding back the Void Wall, and as far as Sorin was concerned, that was doubly negated both by the horrors Samael had committed on the lives he threw away in the process and by the fact that it was all to address an issue he’d caused in the first place.

“I understand that we are asking much of you,” Urd said. “You have your own plans that I doubt included our organization.”

Well, maybe murdering the people keeping it running and letting it fracture into a few dozen smaller gangs, but definitely not leading it, no.

“What exactly do you want me to do here?” Sorin asked.

“The insurgent elements must be brought back into the fold. The Void Wall must be manned. Only the tower’s strongest climber can achieve this. Without you to claim the mantle, I’m afraid we shall break apart and disappear. The rest of the tower will not be long behind.”

Ignoring exactly how the tower had gotten into its current state, Urd wasn’t necessarily wrong. Samael had been the only guy effectively pushing back against the void, however inhumane his tactics had been. Sorin had no plans on repeating them, however, which meant he didn’t need to prop up the legacy of Samael’s work.

The idea of an organization that reported to him wasn’t that appealing, anyway. He could recognize the usefulness of it, but Sorin wanted to climb, not laze about on Floor 0. Besides, an organization might be helpful, but not the Black Hellions specifically. He knew exactly what kinds of people had flocked to that banner, and he was far more likely to kill someone who behaved that way than anything else.

But the Hellions were a problem that needed to be dealt with, and their main concern had been how long it would take to track down the ringleaders. The opportunity was standing right in front of him. All he had to do was go along with Urd’s proposal for a day, kill whoever it was that needed killing, and then be on his way.

The idea left a bad taste in his mouth. It was a lot harder to justify slaughtering people who weren’t attacking him and whose crimes he didn’t even know. He wasn’t against raiding Hellion strongholds, but he wanted to know who his targets were, and for that, he needed information from someone he trusted.

Urd was decidedly not that person. Earnest he might be, but his stated goal was to restore the red tower to the status quo Samael’s Hellions had enforced. That wasn’t a goal Sorin could get behind, especially not when he considered his obligations to the tower itself.

“What happens when we break the Void Wall?” he asked.

“Whatever you want,” Urd replied promptly.

“Okay, let me rephrase the question. What did Samael want after he broke the Void Wall?”

“He never shared his desires with me or anyone else, as far as I’m aware. Creating climbers capable of fighting the void in the numbers needed takes a considerable chunk of our resources. I expect that could be reassigned to growth and acquisition as we consolidate our hold on Floor 0 and oust the high families from their positions of power.”

Yeah, no. That doesn’t sound good for anybody but the Hellions. It’s also getting deep off the path I’m walking.

Perhaps Urd sensed Sorin’s hesitation and knew when to back off, or perhaps he merely had other obligations. Whatever the reason, he pulled a card from his pocket and held it out. “A messenger’s grace,” he said. “To contact me once you’ve reached your decision. The situation grows untenable, but it is not yet beyond salvaging.”

It was a simple magic item with a singular purpose: to send a message to whatever it was paired to. Generally, a single book was connected to dozens of cards exactly like the one Urd was holding out, though there were plenty of other ways to set things up. They had limited range and didn’t work outside Floor 0, sadly, making them useless for anything but doing business anywhere else, which was a shame, because they were cheap to produce.

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Sorin only had two choices, as he saw it. He could kill Urd and as many of the ambushers—or guards, if that’s what they were—lurking nearby as he could. That would destroy one of the three Hellion factions in the city and break the stalemate between them. It wasn’t hard to imagine the other two descending into open warfare at that point, weakening both sides and hopefully allowing Floor 0’s rulers to clean up the mess.

Or he could hold out, accept the offer, and personally demolish all three factions. That would take more of his time, but would probably result in a lot less collateral damage. It would be better for the rank 0s living in the city if he excised the Hellions completely.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, accepting the card from Urd.

“That’s all I can ask. Thank you for your time.”

Then the tall, skeletally thin man bowed again, turned on his heel, and strode away. Sorin stood there, turning the card over in his fingers as he watched the rest of the Hellions vacate the area. Did I do the right thing? Monsters are so much simpler to deal with.

* * *

“They want what?” Yoru sputtered.

Everyone else went through variations of the same reaction, and the table quickly erupted into arguments. Sorin waited, silent and patient, for them to get the visceral reaction out of their systems. Of course he wasn’t going to be the next Samael. Even if he took Urd up on his offer, he wouldn’t tolerate the Black Hellions as they were.

It only took a minute for everyone to get calmed down so that Sorin could lay out the options as he saw them. “Our biggest issue with addressing the Black Hellions is lack of time. We have other jobs to do, ones that are more important,” Sorin said. “Taking Urd up on his offer puts me in a position to hopefully learn exactly where the other two factions are so that I can decisively end them.”

“Can you, though?” Nemari asked. “They’re recalling the rank 24s off the front line. Don’t get me wrong; I’d put my money on you in a one-on-one fight against anyone. But it won’t be that, will it? It’ll be a hundred-on-one.”

“It’s still an opportunity we can and should take advantage of,” Odric argued. “Most of us don’t have a walled compound to keep our family behind, and the Hellions don’t care if they crash through someone’s home when they’re fighting. The high families should be doing something about this, but they aren’t.”

“Lack of manpower and fear,” Yoru said. “Recalling all the rank 24s has forced the high families to keep their own guards close to home. They’re worried that if they send the highly ranked vassals out onto the streets to act as guards, they’re inviting one of the Hellion factions to attack them. And that’s not a baseless fear. Giving a few hundred thugs all the gear and soulprint in any high house’s treasury would make things at the street level significantly worse.”

“But the normal guards who patrol are all between rank 3 and 10, with maybe an occasional elite at 15,” Rue said. “They don’t have the ranks or the numbers to actually stop the Hellions.”

In many ways, assuming control of the Hellions for real was the best way to save the city, but Sorin refused to do it. He didn’t want the power, and he didn’t want the responsibility. The Hellions wouldn’t accept anybody else, though.

“How much time do we have until we have to address the Void Wall?” he asked.

“Impossible to say. As more climbers abandon the defense, it starts growing faster. The ones that aren’t fleeing are still being worn down and killed. I don’t know if anyone has the exact numbers, but let’s just say that the sooner we address it, the better,” Yoru said.

“Days? Weeks? A month?”

“Weeks, I think. Maybe a month. Probably not two.”

“And I’m only on Floor 10. Climbing fourteen floors in a month...”

“We might have to accept that we’re going to lose Floor 24 before we can reach it,” Nemari said.

“And we still don’t actually know what’s holding the Void back from spreading up,” Sorin said.

Something was. That much was clear from the tower itself. Whether it was the climbers who’d already gone beyond that floor or some monster the tower had made to fight back remained to be seen. He suspected it was a tower-forged solution, because actual climbers would have descended into Floor 25 and ended the infestation years ago.

“Okay, I’ve made up my mind,” Sorin said a few minutes later, cutting through the discussion. “You’re all on Floor 13. I’m still on Floor 10. That means, bare minimum, I need to catch up to you. I’m going to go do that. If you want to keep climbing, that’s your decision. If you want to stay down here and address this Hellion situation, also fine. I should be able to do three floors that I completely outclass in less than a week. Let’s meet back here then, and we’ll take it from there.”

“But what about everyone down here in the meantime?” Rue asked.

“I’m a stranger here, so I don’t really know what this place was like before Samael showed up, but I have to wonder if killing off the Black Hellions is really going to make anything better. Will the high families continue to rule? If so, will they do so fairly, or will they just keep things going the way they have been, only with more of the profits going to them now?”

“It was different,” Yoru said quietly. “I remember it.”

“And maybe it’ll go back to that. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not interested in getting mired in social reform down here on Floor 0. I didn’t want anything to do with that back home, and I certainly don’t want to be involved now. This is your tower. If you want to make some changes to how things are done, you have my blessing. Climb with me. Hit rank 25. Come back with the power needed to force a new way.

“Or don’t. Stay here. Work on a plan. I’ll come back in a week and devote a day or two to helping you remove the biggest obstacles. That’s your choice.”

“It won’t matter what we do if we let the void keep spreading,” Nemari said. “I think we need to get back to the climb.”

Rue glanced over at Odric. Neither of them looked so sure. “I understand that ultimately, the void has to be our priority,” she said, “but my family is going to be caught up in all this. If we aren’t here to protect them, they could die.”

“Are you or are you not a rich climber?” Sorin asked her. “Move them somewhere safer.”

“Is there going to be anywhere that’s truly safe in a month though?” Yoru asked. “You might be the only one who can actually stand up to all these rank 24s coming down from the Void Wall.”

“Then stay here and work on finding them. I’ll be back, and we’ll take a day to deal with them. You’ll have a week to figure out who they are, where they are, and what to do about them.” Sorin looked around the table. “Now, before I leave, who wants to catch me up on what to look for over the next three floors?”

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