The Fractured Tower

They took a break midway through the second day, just an hour for everyone to eat and relax. One thing Rue hated about the enhanced stamina they were all sporting now was that it got harder to justify breaks when they didn’t physically need them.

Unlike Sorin, though, the rest of them weren’t machines. They weren’t tired, but they needed some time to mentally unwind from the rigors of sustained farming for over thirty hours straight. Rue had argued for three hours to relax, but Yoru had overruled her and convinced everyone else to go along.

“It’s already going to be hard enough to keep up once we push up to rank 19,” he said. “We’re not going up a floor, and you know Sorin isn’t going to move slow. We need to do our best to make it to rank 24 as quickly as we can, and that means limiting our downtime.”

He’s not wrong, but we’ve basically been going for half a year without stopping. We’re probably in the top hundred strongest climbers in the tower, especially if you don’t include the wall veterans.

Much as she wanted to complain, though, she knew what she’d signed up for. Sorin was a harsh taskmaster, but he got results. When this was over, Rue planned on having a real shot at claiming the title of strongest climber alive, or at least in the red tower. That assumed Sorin was eventually going to leave to complete his mission, of course. Nobody could keep up with him, not with all the unfair advantages he had.

“Which one of you guys hired my brother?” Azlo asked in the middle of the break.

“I did,” Yoru said.

“How’d he do?”

“No complaints. I would have hired him for the next floor, too, but he wasn’t ready to go on my timetable.”

Rue only vaguely recalled Heldigar. She’d had other things on her mind at the time. They’d been trapped inside a ruin that had almost killed them, would have, in fact, if not for Yoru’s intervention. He’d been operating a three-man team of himself, Vendis as his healer, and Heldigar as their front line. Considering Rue’s own team had only been four people at the time, she hadn’t given a second thought to the arrogance of a bunch of rank 1s climbing at half strength.

Looking back on it, she wanted to say that they should have been less picky and just filled out the roster, but Nemari’s caution had been warranted. Other climbers were a real danger, especially at the lower ranks. Trusting the wrong people could get them killed. People who behaved like that weeded themselves out, and they hadn’t had an issue with rival climbers since Floor 10, but the lessons in paranoia had been firmly drilled into Rue by then.

“You guys are something else. I can’t believe you all started at the same time as my little brother,” Azlo said with a laugh. “I’m used to being the guy who runs the show and keeps everyone out of trouble, but I’m a little intimidated just thinking about keeping up with you all.”

“You’re doing fine,” Od said absently. Small glass jars of spice were appearing seemingly at random in his hands as he considered them. Most vanished just as quickly without being used. “Food’s almost ready.”

“I’m a bit worried about the smell attracting unwelcome visitors,” Nemari said.

Rue scoffed. “If it does, we’ll kill them. Just means more anima for us.”

“What happens at the end of our three days when you guys are nowhere near anima capped for the floor?” Azlo asked. “I know Sorin’s got this schedule, but I don’t see how that changes the truth of things. Even if you get carried all the way to Floor 24, you can’t help if you’re still rank 18.”

“It’s a problem,” Yoru admitted. “We’ll probably just stay on Floor 18 for the next two weeks or so while Sorin clears the higher floors, joining him only to defeat the portal guardian and then returning here. The idea is to skip floors so we don’t have to dedicate part of our soulspaces to the defenses we need to survive the environments.”

Once the details were laid out, Azlo quickly picked up on what they were trying to do. He started considering his own role in it and what soulprints he’d need. Unlike the rest of the team, he’d been climbing for a few years, which gave him plenty of time to practice. He was fully capable of merging E-rank soulprints, though he admitted his proficiency with the technique was how he’d earned his role as a carrier in the first place.

“I know plenty of people my rank who can’t merge for shit,” he said. “And that’s part of why they’re struggling to go up another floor. All things considered, you guys are doing pretty good to be where you’re at. You can’t have spent much time practicing.

“One thing I don’t understand, though, is why you’re all rushing. I mean, I get why Sorin is going up there as fast as he can, but, and no offense, I don’t think the four of you are going to make that much of a difference. We’ve got dozens of climbers up there with builds specifically designed to fight the void, and you guys are all more traditional climbers.”

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Didn’t Sorin tell him?

Rue could tell they were all thinking the same thing. Azlo obviously didn’t know that they had their own mosaic, but none of them were sure how much to reveal. It would come out eventually, but Rue wouldn’t mind a few weeks at minimum to get to know Azlo better before she considered sharing a secret like that with him.

“We’ve got a plan to deal with that,” she said.

“And... are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Not today,” Yoru told him. “This is along the lines of sharing your build with people you don’t know. We’d like to work with you a bit longer before we get into it. For now, we just need to keep climbing.”

“Alright, sorry. I won’t pry.”

Od started handing out food after that. He didn’t even flinch when he pulled the iron pan out of the fire bare-handed, which Rue still hadn’t gotten used to no matter how many times she saw him do it. The meat came from the flank of a bison they’d separated from a herd the day before, and though it wouldn’t rank among her favorite dishes, it was pretty good for an ad hoc campfire meal.

“And that’s our time,” Yoru said once everyone was done. “Actually, it’s ten minutes over our time. So let’s get this cleaned up and get back to work.”

* * *

They were still about twenty minutes from the portal hub when Sorin found them. “How’d it go?” he asked by way of greeting, popping up in the middle of their formation and scaring the hell out of Azlo.

“Ignore him,” Rue told the giant man. “He’s always doing this.”

“Maybe a third of the way to capping for the floor,” Yoru reported. “We pushed, but it’s just a lot of ground to cover.”

“It’s fine. We knew this was going to happen,” Sorin said. “We’ll get you up to rank 19, then you can go back to work.”

“Yay... work,” Rue said half-heartedly. Sorin shot her a look, but she just shook her head. “It’s fine. Just tired.”

“Yeah, this is a grueling pace,” he agreed. “Normally, I wouldn’t push this fast, but...”

“But it’s necessary,” Rue finished for him. “I know. But I’m still going to complain about it.”

They caught each other up on what they’d gotten done, which for Sorin was six new soulprints—none of them were anything they wanted—and a ruin he’d accidentally stumbled across that wasn’t in any of the information they had access to. He’d blitzed through it as quickly as possible to claim the rewards. In that regard, he’d managed to get his hands on his next slate.

Surprisingly, the rest of the rewards had been worthwhile. There were only two pieces, which was why he speculated they were so useful, but that was better than a dozen items of questionable value. The first was a brass lantern. It looked completely normal to Rue, but when Sorin handed it to Nemari and told her to light it, clouds of steam started rolling out at a terrific rate.

They were all engulfed in it in moments, but then it started to spiral up overhead. “Where does the water come from?” Nemari asked as she used her own magic to take control of the steam.

“That’s the enchantment. This’ll allow you to control the battlefield a bit better, and the next time you end up in a desert, you won’t be left unable to use your water magic.”

The second piece was useful for all of them, but in the end, they decided to give it to Yoru. It was a simple pin made of gold with a stylized wing on it. Whatever it was attached to gained the ability to let its wearer fly for a few seconds, with the duration depending on how much they moved. Flying around would drain the magic quickly, but floating in place didn’t use nearly as much. It also allowed the user to glide, with the drain dependent on forward momentum and how fast they fell.

The drawback to floating in the air was that it made Yoru into a very convenient target, but since he was their best defended ranged climber, they decided he could use it the most. When Yoru suggested Sorin keep it since he was fighting on his own, Sorin just laughed and said, “I’ve been able to fly under my own power for a while now. I don’t need that.”

They dropped Azlo off at the portal hub. The last Rue saw of him was his jaw dropping as Sorin pulled them all into liminal space. Knowing the rules about keeping noise to a minimum, she bit back a chuckle, but she wasn’t the only one who’d seen him. Od was also holding a hand over his mouth, and even Yoru had a smirk on his face.

Sorin let them back out at the mouth of a ravine with a creek winding its way out of it. “It’s about a mile away from here. Seems pretty much like the books described it. I’ll go in first and keep it locked down. You guys get your hits in, then we’ll finish it off.”

It was almost boring how routine the fight ended up being. Rue and the rest might be a little bit weaker than average, but Sorin had pushed so far ahead of the floor they were on that he basically just stood there and crushed the guardian the instant he was sure they’d all gotten a few good hits in. That wasn’t hard, considering it was a twenty-foot-tall statue of a woman wielding an appropriately sized spear in one hand and a shield that could have doubled as a roof in the other.

She crumbled to dust in a matter of moments. The rank up pain swept through them, somehow the worst it had ever been despite Rue’s brain assuring her there was no way it could possibly get any worse than back on Floor 17. She blinked tears out of her eyes and saw the others doing the same.

“Look at the bright side,” Nemari said. “When we gain enough anima, we won’t have to go through the rank up process mid-fight.”

The Antechamber portal floated in front of them. Sorin was already next to it, just waiting for them to come out of the rank up. “I’ll probably be by myself in this one. Give me a few minutes before you come out. You know the drill.”

“We do. No one wants a repeat of the kraken incident,” Yoru assured him. “We’ll take our time.”

Rue barely noticed him walking through the portal. Instead, she was focused on the pile of rubble that had been a floor guardian. “You ever think we’re fucking ourselves in the long run doing this?” she asked.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Od told her.

“I hope you’re right.”

Then they followed Sorin into the portal and left Floor 18 behind for the moment.

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