The Fractured Tower

Once Sorin knew to look, he could see some superficial differences. The giant of a man and Heldigar looked so alike that they could be twins, but this guy had a scar running up one arm, and his hair was a bit lighter, probably bleached by the sun. He also moved with far more confidence and skill, though Sorin had initially dismissed that as the acquisition of a dozen or more new soulprints.

“Yeah. I’ve run into him a few times,” Sorin said. “Sorry about the mix up.”

“Happens all the time. I’m Azlo. Nice to meet you.”

Sorin accepted the outstretched hand and allowed Azlo to pump his arm up and down a few times. The enthusiasm reminded him of a giant puppy, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. God knew his team had enough issues with rubbing each other the wrong way, even if that had been mostly smoothed out by now. Maybe adding someone with Azlo’s personality to the mix would help.

“I’m Sorin,” he said.

Azlo’s whole body froze, and his eyes widened. “Uh... Sorin the guy... uh...”

“Yes, the one who killed Lord Samael,” Lanir said. “Though he’s made it clear he’s not looking to inherit the organization. For the time being, our goals align, so we’re working together. Specifically, you’re working with him.”

“Me? Wouldn’t one of the higher-ranked carriers—”

“No. They don’t need a carrier. They need a strong front-liner with good control skills,” Lanir explained.

Realization hit Azlo. “I see! Yeah, I can do that. I’m great at that. What floor are you working on, Lord Sorin?”

I would kill Samael all over again if he wasn’t already dead, Sorin thought. Pretentious, arrogant asshole. The way every single one of his people immediately calls me ‘Lord’ has to be a holdover from his policies.

“Just Sorin is fine. And we’re on Floor 18 at the moment. I’ll be moving ahead solo, and my team needs someone who can keep monsters under control and take hits.”

“Hah! I’m your man for that.” Azlo slapped a hand against his chest, but then he glanced back over at Lanir. “What about the current group I’m carrying now?”

“Not important anymore,” Lanir said immediately. “They can park it on Floor 0 for however long it takes to complete this assignment.”

“Works for me. Guess I’m with you then, Lo—er, Sorin.”

“I’ll leave you to explain the rest, if you don’t mind,” Lanir told Sorin.

“That’s fine. Thank you for the help.”

Lanir set off, heading directly to the portal, leaving Sorin alone with Azlo. Urd himself had left shortly after the initial introductions, which was more than fine by Sorin. There was something dangerous about that man that Sorin couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was subtle and unfailingly polite, and Sorin fully believed Urd believed in the work he was doing. It was more of a fear of what Urd would do after.

And that won’t be my problem, he told himself.

“So, how’d you meet my brother?” Azlo asked after they started walking.

“Coincidence. I ran into him at the Meat Grinder when he was buying two over-sized swords.” Sorin glanced over Azlo’s shoulders to the hilts of his own weapons. “I guess I know where he got the idea now.”

Azlo laughed. “Yeah, my little brother’s always looked up to me.” But then he sobered up and added, “I didn’t want him getting tangled up with the gangs, too. That slowed him down a lot. He’s years behind me, but I try to slip him some supplies or a new soulprint when I can. Can you believe he’s already up to rank 8 after just six months?”

That didn’t seem that outrageous to Sorin, especially if Heldigar had someone feeding him what he needed to grow stronger. Still, he recognized that what he considered reasonable and what the average person did were not at all the same thing.

“Sounds like he’s been busy. One of the guys on our team now actually hired Heldigar once to help clear a ruin. That was the second time I met him, when our two teams bumped into each other.”

“Why would you guys need to hire someone so much lower ranked?” Azlo asked.

“Oh, we were all rank 1 at the same time.”

The gears started turning, and despite how he looked and acted, Azlo wasn’t stupid. He understood the implications of what Sorin was saying. “Damn,” he said softly. “You guys must be really hauling ass. How long do you think you’ll need to get up to the Void Wall?”

“Hopefully not more than a month. I understand that the defense is falling apart with Samael gone.”

“Yeah,” Azlo growled. “Lot of people just up and abandoned us all at once. Things went to hell. The carriers have been pushing non-stop trying to get new people into place, but even that’s been a challenge. Half our teams just scattered.”

“Samael’s mind control snapped when he died,” Sorin said. “I’m not surprised that people realized what he’d done and decided not to waste their lives fighting for his cause.”

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Azlo jerked in surprise. “Mind control?”

“What he was doing... It might have been necessary for the tower as a whole to survive, but most of the people he was sacrificing up on Floor 24 weren’t there by choice.”

“That... That’s not true,” Azlo said. “I’ve been working with the Hellions for over four years now. I know they’re not all good people, especially the ones controlling Floor 0, but it’s not like that. It’s not.”

Sorin shrugged. “I’ve noticed that a lot of the people in your organization don’t seem to actually know much about Samael. He’s the one who tore open a hole that let the void in on Floor 25 in the first place, you know? In a way, it’s kind of impressive that he managed to contain it there.”

The conversation was much more subdued after that, but the walk back to the house Nemari had rented wasn’t very long. They arrived in short order, Sorin introduced Azlo to the team, and they took a few minutes to discuss what everyone was capable of. That conversation was limited to broad strokes, as climbers generally weren’t eager to give away their builds for a variety of reasons, but it was enough to get started.

* * *

Sorin spent the first hour on Floor 18 with the rest of his team. With Azlo filling their sixth spot, they went directly from the portal hub to the first farming location. Having already cleared this floor previously, and given his job carrying weaker climbers, Azlo turned out to be exactly what they needed.

“Damn, he’s good at this,” Nemari said as she pelted a swarm of hundreds of small raccoon-porcupine hybrid monsters with fire blasts. They responded by shedding copious amounts of fur and manipulating it with aerokinesis. Anything the fur passed over was completely shredded, which made it difficult for the melee fighters of the team to participate.

Or it would have, except Azlo knew exactly how to counter the attack. He had an aura of static density around him, and while the difference was negligible to the powerful climbers moving in and out of it, the normally light strands of fur immediately dropped straight into the dirt as soon as they were loosed from the monsters.

“It’s a very specific defense,” Sorin said. He was casually firing off thin needles of force to help control the outer edges of the battle, deliberately keeping his touch light to see how the rest of the team functioned without him helping. Nothing he did was going to really affect the outcome in any way except to hurry it along. “Not many monsters have an offensive ability that would be limited by that. I suspect he took it for these monsters, knowing he’d be fighting them regularly for every group he carried through this floor.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We aren’t looking for a permanent new teammate, just someone to fill a temporary role for the next month or so.”

That was true, but it still annoyed Sorin to see someone taking soulprints that would be almost useless except against one type of monster. An aura that increased the density of everything in it by a set amount was good for nothing except deflecting light-weight projectiles, and that wasn’t a common enough attack to justify wasting the soulspace on it, at least not for a climber who was only rank 19.

The team finished the first fight up quickly. The next three were equally easy, with Azlo always producing the perfect ability to control the monsters and neutralize their most dangerous attacks. No matter what they fought, their newest team member had an answer. It was good, but it ran counter to what Sorin wanted to see.

He needed to know that Azlo could handle himself when he was fighting against an unknown, when he had to defend against a monster he didn’t already have the perfect ability for. After a brief conference about their intended route, he deliberately steered them an hour out of their way. They were specifically hunting for a bipedal monster known as a gurthik.

They were territorial monsters that would fly into a rage at the sight of another living creature, and their raw strength was unmatched. Sorin considered it a good test for Azlo, who, while not exactly nervous, was uncharacteristically quiet as they marched. The fact that he hadn’t already thought of a way to deal with a monster on a floor he was carrying people through wasn’t a great sign, but Sorin cut him a bit of slack since this was probably Azlo’s first time back on Floor 18 since he’d climbed it himself.

The gurthik found them before they could find it. Sorin noticed it with Observer, but kept that to himself. Rue spotted it next, followed almost immediately by Azlo. It moved through the trees overhead with startling speed and agility, and before the team had a chance to even solidify their formation, it dropped down on them.

Rue was its first target, but Azlo got in the way. With a powerful leap, he literally tackled it midair. The two went rolling end over end, a jumble of steel-armored limbs and massive, fur covered ones. Azlo got the worst of it when they slammed into a tree, striking it so hard that it gave way. Man and monster broke apart in two different directions, and the upper half of the tree tipped over to catch in the canopy of its neighbor.

Good reflexes, Sorin noted. Not a clean deflection, but considering how strong it’s supposed to be, I can’t fault him for not holding it steady in the air.

Sorin had specifically picked this as a challenge for Azlo because enraged monsters were notoriously difficult to control. They tore through restraints and ignored wounds to pursue whatever caught their attention, which made Azlo’s job all that much harder. If he could keep the gurthik pinned down anyway, Sorin would know he was leaving his team with a capable fifth member.

It wasn’t a pretty fight, nothing like the previous ones had been. Odric had his work cut out for him, especially when the gurthik got free after picking Azlo up and throwing him fifty feet through another tree. Rue’d been caught in a backhand just to get her out of the way, and the monster had gone charging for Nemari.

Sorin almost stepped in at that point, but then Azlo triggered Interception and practically flew through the empty space between himself and the gurthik. He slammed into it hard enough to knock it to the ground, which was all the more impressive because the monster had to weigh close to a ton.

He’s making use of all his tools. The build seems to focus on hindering monsters, bolstering allies, and battlefield positioning. He’d struggle to kill anything on his own, but even a team of carries can back him up with basic offense. I think he’ll do just fine.

They killed the gurthik a few minutes later, and not once did Sorin lift a finger. “Alright, I’m convinced,” he said while they caught their breath. “We’ll meet back up at the portal hub in three days. By then, I should have found the floor guardian’s arena. I’ll take you to it directly, except for Azlo, and we’ll push up to Floor 19. Azlo, we’ll meet you back at the Floor 18 hub once we’re done.”

Though he was wary—accidents could and did happen with frightening regularity—there just wasn’t enough time to keep playing it safe. They all understood that, and ten minutes later, Sorin was racing across a massive, thirty-mile-wide lake that dominated the center of the floor. So fast was he that the monsters living in the water couldn’t reach the surface in time to catch him, which did not stop some of the stupider ones from giving chase.

Inevitably, they failed, and the ones who were positioned luckily enough to intercept him quickly found themselves dead. Sorin didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down to kill them. Now that the plan was in motion, every second counted.

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