The Fractured Tower

Sorin walked into a three-story building that squatted beneath the south wall of the city like a big, ugly, gray boil. It had no windows, at least not on the sides. Glass was uncommon enough that it was rarely used for windows, but Samael had been practically the patriarch of a high family in his own right. If he wanted skylights, he could afford them.

He hadn’t, apparently. Instead, he’d opted to have magically crafted lights installed in the walls and ceiling. Sorin was sure that they’d all been lit a few months ago, but today, it was maybe one in four, and only in the well-traveled areas. Most of Samael’s stronghold was dark, dusty, and abandoned, leaving maybe a third of it still seeing active use.

That made it easy for Sorin to reach his goal. Urd was two floors below street level, sleeping fitfully, and unguarded. Most of the Hellions he did meet were around rank 5, with the occasional outlier getting up to rank 8 or 9. That confirmed what he’d been able to learn prior to coming here, that the other two factions had most of the powerful members of the organization. Urd was only holding on because he had a core of four rank 20s backing him and access to Samael’s personal vaults.

The door to Urd’s personal chamber was locked. Briefly, Sorin considered busting it down, but then he thought better of it. For the moment, he wanted to make a good impression on Urd. Once he got what he wanted, he’d level the whole damn building if that’s what the situation called for.

Surprisingly, there weren’t any soulprints used for picking locks, at least not that Sorin was aware of. Considering that there basically weren’t locked doors anywhere in the tower outside Floor 0—and that didn’t really count as ‘in the tower’ to Sorin—maybe that wasn’t surprising. That meant he didn’t have an easy, elegant solution for opening the door, but he could pass through it without opening it.

Short-range teleportation really didn’t exist below C-rank, which would have been a problem three months ago. Now, it was just a matter of putting the magic together. Normally, spells like this required line of sight on the destination, but a sufficiently skilled climber could substitute an image of where they wanted to go instead, and Observer showed him the interior well enough for Sorin to do just that.

He was immediately reminded why he didn’t actually use spells like this in a fight when it drained a tenth of his total anima reserves in an instant. A soulprint would have been more efficient, of course, but the expense was too high to even consider regular usage for at least another ten or fifteen ranks. Filling the reservoir in that buckle was even more costly, but he supposed it was worth it since he could charge it during his off-time.

But for one door, it was fine. This was all about making a statement. He’d entered the stronghold undetected, strode right past the guards, and made his way to Urd’s personal quarters. There’d been no damage to anything, no alarms raised, no dead bodies. After he was done and gone, Urd would go out to see what had happened, and Sorin wanted him to realize what he’d done.

He loomed over the bed and let Still Winter unfurl around him. Whether it was the abrupt drop in temperature or the anima flowing through the soulprint, it achieved the desired result. Urd’s eyes snapped open, and his whole body leaped off the bed with seemingly no regard for physics. Sorin idly categorized it as a form of telekinesis, but it was weak enough that he halted Urd’s momentum with a single hand placed on the man’s chest.

“No need to get up,” he said. “I’m just here to talk.”

“Lord Sorin,” Urd gasped out. He almost seemed to slither around Sorin’s hand, his body flexing in ways that were anything but natural. “You’ve finally decided to join us?”

‘Lord?’ That’s new.

“Something like that,” Sorin said. “I’ve run into an issue, and I think you could help me solve it.”

“Of course. Tell me what you need, and I shall see it done.”

Whatever else could be said about the man, Urd wasn’t slow on the uptake. Sorin had barely started to describe what he was after before Urd put it all together. He pointed to a bookshelf behind Sorin and said, “Everything you want to know is contained in there. I had them brought from Lord Samael’s chambers after his death to preserve them.”

“And what do you want in return?” Sorin asked.

While he hoped this would be an easy trade, he doubted it. Urd had already made his desires clear in the first meeting, and Sorin had no intention of taking up Samael’s mantle.

“Nothing,” Urd said.

Sorin blinked. “Nothing?” he repeated.

“They are already yours. It’s hardly fit to ask for payment merely for safeguarding your possessions for a few months.”

“They’re Samael’s,” Sorin said.

“And you killed him. Therefore, they are yours.”

Debatable. I think the tower did more than me, but I suppose I can take credit for an assist.

This tale has been pilfered from NovelPhoenix. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“You know I’m not taking over your gang like you want, right?” Sorin asked.

Urd took a breath and spread his hands. “I fear you have misunderstood my purpose when I asked that of you. I simply seek to secure the tower against the void’s influence. To that end, I’ve done my best to hold together Lord Samael’s assets for you to claim. If you do not feel you want the organization itself, only this information, then that is your right.

“But I ask of you, how sure are you that you can succeed where your predecessor failed?”

Sorin wasn’t sure, not at all. But he did think he had better odds. “You knew Samael a long time, right?” he asked. “Like, back when he was still climbing?”

“Not that far back,” Urd admitted. “I met him seven years ago. But I think I can say with some confidence that I knew him best.”

“Yeah? Samael ever mention a regular climbing team? He go through a lot of Antechambers with them?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Sorin nodded. “That’s what I figured. That’s why I think I can accomplish what he failed to do.”

“I’m not following, Lord Sorin.”

“Stop with that ‘lord’ shit. I’m not anybody’s lord.”

“My apologies,” Urd said, pressing one hand against his chest and giving a shallow bow. Considering he was still seated on his bed, it was more creepy than anything since it emphasized how long and unnaturally thin his body was. “Would you be willing to enlighten me as to why that makes a difference? Lord Samael had no lack of climbers to assist him.”

“Because, Urd, as it turns out, when you’re in our position, if you bring the same team into the Antechamber with you over and over, the tower recognizes that you’re recruiting them and starts giving them some of the same benefits it gives you.”

Urd froze for a second, the gears turning in his mind. “Are you saying... that you have an entire team of people as strong as you?”

“Not yet,” Sorin said. “That’s what we’re working on. The hourglass is against us, though, and we don’t have a lot of time to do things slowly and safely.”

“Thus your visit, looking for information and supplies. It’s a shift in strategy from what we’ve been doing previously, but you have advantages we lacked. Very well. If this is how you plan to banish the void, I will do everything in my power to assist you.”

Sorin almost thought it was a trap of some sort, but Urd never did anything suspicious. He fetched the books Sorin wanted, even went through them quickly to give an overview of what information they contained, and patiently answered any clarifying questions. Then the whole set went into Sorin’s dimensional pouch, which got a curious glance, but no comment.

“Would you like to access your vaults now?” Urd asked once they’d finished.

“You mean Samael’s va—Ah, right. I guess, by your logic, those are mine, now.”

“Precisely. To be honest with you, though I’ve done my best to catalog their contents, I was not able to identify everything contained within. If you’re looking for something in particular, I can try to guide you to it, but I’m afraid you’ll likely have to sort through much of it yourself.”

“What kind of stuff was Samael keeping in there?” Sorin asked, once again on his guard. A vault was likely to be trapped, and it was entirely possible Urd’s current helpfulness was just a ploy to get Sorin to walk through the door.

It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. Chances were that Urd was entirely truthful in his motivations. He wanted the Void Wall contained—or even better, destroyed—and he’d been helping Samael because he saw no other way to accomplish that. From what Sorin understood of the other factions, they were primarily focused on controlling the underbelly of the city.

Maybe that’s the schism, though. Urd wants to dedicate the gang’s resources toward fighting the Void Wall, but without Samael using mind control magic on the sacrificial pawns, it’s no wonder most of them aren’t willing to keep going. And of course humanity is so short-sighted that they’re not going to acknowledge the problem until it’s pounding down their doors.

It was a good thing there were five other towers full of humans, because Sorin was pretty sure that this one was going to go extinct. If it wasn’t this particular void issue, it would just be something else later on. Everything he saw about red tower society just served to convince him that, if nothing else, it was going to cannibalize itself until there was nothing left.

“Some of the more unique pieces of loot he obtained from various tower caches were preserved for his personal collection,” Urd listed. “Of course, a bank of soulprints for him to study and experiment with. Various crafted pieces of equipment, as well as collections of tools. He seemed to enjoy metalworking when he found the time, though that wasn’t very often.”

“He was experimenting with soulprints?” Sorin asked. “Do you know what he was trying to accomplish?”

“He never shared the results with me. His logbooks are in his workshop, though. I confess I took a peek when I was trying to take inventory, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

Did he actually have a method of modifying soulprints before they were absorbed? Could I replicate it? That would change everything.

It didn’t seem likely to Sorin. If Samael had that kind of power, he could have easily built hundreds of C-rank soulprints to outfit his minions with. Sorin had seen absolutely no evidence of that happening, so he tempered his expectations. At best, it seemed like Samael might be able to tinker with weak F or E-rank soulprints, but that was still more than Sorin could do.

“I’d like to see those,” Sorin said.

“Of course. Would you like to go to the vaults now?”

“Might as well.”

Urd gave another of his bows, his head almost even with Sorin’s despite being bent over at the waist, and turned to the door. His mask of composure slipped for a second when he realized it was still locked, but then a slow smile crept across his lips. If anything, he seemed perversely pleased by the display of power.

Producing a key from a drawer next to the door, he inserted it and twisted it. The lock disengaged with a heavy clunk, and Urd pushed the door open. Still wary of traps, Sorin followed him through. The pair ghosted down silent, empty halls, neither bothered by the lack of light. After a minute of walking, during which they passed what Sorin suspected were Samael’s own chambers, they arrived at a door at the end of a hallway.

“A word of caution,” Urd said, halting directly in front of the door. “Lord Samael enspelled the door to admit only himself and me. I do not have the ability to change that, but I trust you won’t find the task beyond your skill?”

“Sure,” Sorin said.

Force Weaver leaped out, attacking the wall around the door. It punched holes into the stone, then spread through and flared, ripping everything apart. A moment later, the door fell backward, leaving a gaping hole where it used to be.

“All set. After you.”

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