The Fractured Tower

A lifetime of climbing had equipped Sorin with a vast store of knowledge about his chosen profession. He could identify thousands of monsters on sight, knew their strengths and their weaknesses, and had observed the patterns countless times. Even if he didn’t know exactly what a monster was, he always had a good idea of what kind of surprises to expect.

Cat monsters were universally fast. They were slippery, able to turn immense forward momentum in a different direction seemingly instantly. Their claws came so quickly that it was easy to miss the strike until after it was already over. They liked to sink their enormous fangs into necks and bite down, crushing the spine or, if they were big enough, the skull itself.

As a general rule, most cats didn’t do much in the way of external magic. It was rare to fight one that could breathe fire or generate an aura of lightning. When they could do that kind of stuff, something in their appearance generally hinted at the capability. There were no hard and fast rules, but there were a lot of similarities.

Sorin expected the massive, golden-maned lion to be fast despite its size. He expected its claws to tear through any and all defenses he could mount if it managed to hit him. He even expected some sort of sound-based attack from its roar, having seen similar monsters do exactly that.

He did not expect the damn thing to turn into a pillar of light and teleport behind him.

It made sense, once he stopped to think about it. It was a trial guardian in a savanna where the sun just circled the sky, never setting. The coloring probably also should have given it away, but he’d just thought it was a paler tan than normal.

Horizon Watcher saved him. Without the Aura Sense component of it giving him a fraction of a second to react, the lion would have torn him to pieces before the fight even really started. Instead, he felt the flicker of anima behind him as its body vanished into light. That was all the warning he needed to push anima into Lesser Aspect of Grace and dodge.

Left paw or right?

If he guessed wrong, he would throw himself directly into its claws. If he guessed right, he’d still be at a disadvantage with the enormous lion at his back. The only true answer then was to go straight up, so that no matter which way it struck, he’d be coming down on its head.

The lion appeared, exactly where Sorin had known it would, its left paw extended and flashing through the empty space he’d been in a moment earlier. He came down, sword leading, and slashed at its face, only to find it vanished into motes of light again.

He threw himself sideways, a single step taking him a full thirty feet, and the lion appeared in midair to pounce on him. It slammed into the ground like a spring, barely seeming to even touch the dirt as its body rose back into a jump. Claws leading, it descended on Sorin.

He rushed beneath its outstretched limbs, Force Weaver coming to life around him and Still Winter unfolding to chill the air. The lion ignored both and pivoted upon landing, putting it once again behind Sorin.

It had a few dozen small slices across its stomach and legs now, but they were papercuts, not even bleeding. If he wanted Force Weaver to have any effect, he was going to have to focus his power into solid, armor-piercing hits instead of the broad area attacks he’d been primarily using since creating the soulprint.

But flexibility was the whole point of Force Weaver, after all. He could create massive spears of force if the situation demanded it, and this one did. All he needed to do was set things up properly to take advantage of the several-thousand-pounds teleporting lion’s propensity to pounce, and it would impale itself on his magic.

That was easier said than done, but Sorin had already noticed something important. There was a delay between teleports. It was half a second, barely enough time to blink, but as the two chased each other across the savanna, there were multiple instances where an immediate second teleport would have helped it reposition to catch him when he perfectly timed his dodge out of its reach. And it only needed to hit him once to end the fight, so there was no reason not to, unless it couldn’t.

It can’t escape again if it teleports above me.

Sorin pulled on Living Earth to create a spire of stone that slammed into the lion’s chest, but without additional supporting magic, the stone was what cracked and gave way. He needed steel, preferably enchanted for durability, but he couldn’t magic that up. Force attacks were manifestations of kinetic energy given an edge, and they relied on momentum for their piercing power. The speed of gravity pulling the lion down probably wouldn’t be enough, either.

Leaping over a flashing paw in a no-hands somersault, he hacked at the offending limb. His sword bit into flesh, but only barely, and the force of the lion’s muscles nearly tore the weapon free of his hand. Glancing blows aren’t going to work, either.

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There was no way this thing wasn’t enhanced by the tower specifically to fight him. He was rank 25, even if his build had lagged behind. Nothing in this trial should have been strong or solid enough to outmuscle him or defend against his attacks. The lion, apparently, disagreed.

Even as his boots hit the ground, the knife-like claws on its other paw were coming down on top of him. By the time he could push himself to the side, it’d be too late. So he pushed the earth instead, sending himself to the left and shifting the ground the lion stood on to the right. The paw clipped his shoulder on the way down, flaring up Iron Bulwark even though the actual claw had missed him.

Sorin dropped to a knee so hard he left a divot in the dirt, but he was already gone before the lion could capitalize on it. A single teleport was all it took to catch up to Sorin, but by then, he’d reset his stance and was ready for it.

Over and over they circled, swapping the roles of predator and prey from second to second, except the lion wasn’t worried about being caught. Sorin couldn’t even hurt it fast enough to outpace its regeneration. As the fight pushed past the one-minute marker, he became more and more certain that the only way he was going to win was a single, overpowering, fatal strike.

There!

Horizon Watcher showed the lion positioning itself to come down on him. Probably due to its feline nature, it heavily favored that approach, but it usually set itself behind or off to the side. This time, it was directly overhead.

With Multitask helping to coordinate his counter, Sorin did something the lion probably wasn’t expecting. He crouched down and ripped the earth up around him into a massive spike, then he layered razor-edged force above that. Still Winter billowed out to weaken whatever magical defenses the lion might bring to bear.

A shadow blocked the sun as the monster finished its teleport, then it descended directly onto his head. The force wedge struck its chest and shattered. The stone spike struck its chest... and shattered. Blood, fur, and flesh went flying, but the lion itself outraced them.

Not even the full strength of two of his strongest soulprints working in concert and getting a clean hit were enough to break the guardian. His attack had forced it slightly off course, and rather than its claws tearing through him, the full weight of its body instead slammed Sorin into the dirt. It wasn’t the ideal outcome, but he’d anticipated that even his double strike wouldn’t do it.

When he’d thrown a stone spike up, Living Earth had drawn the material from below his feet. Sorin was already halfway in the ground, and he raised his sword up with both arms. Its point didn’t waver, not even for a moment. The magic had torn through its chest, shredding its mane and the steel-furred pelt beneath it.

Now the sword sunk in, and Sorin unleashed Chain Bolt through it. Lightning coursed through the lion’s body, causing it, for the first time, to rear back and let out a roar of pain. Anima was laced in the sound, a stunning wave of force that crashed into Sorin and left him bleeding from his ears. His vision blurred, but he didn’t need it to see what came next.

The attack hadn’t brought the lion down. In fact, it pushed down, impaling itself further on his sword as its jaws opened to engulf the top half of his body. Hot, fetid breath rushed past him and the light vanished, leaving only the impression of massive teeth about to bite down.

Got you.

Force Weaver erupted out of his body, a drill of it that spiraled straight up into the lion’s open mouth while thick bars formed between its jaws to hold them open. Sorin didn’t believe they’d hold for even a second, but that extra bit of resistance bought him the time he needed for his magic to rip through the soft palate and up into the guardian’s brain.

Sorin hadn’t trusted himself to kill the monster before it could bite down, and he didn’t fancy his chances of living through that, so even as he delivered the deathblow to the massive lion, he activated his final contingency. He’d used himself as bait, knowing that the lion would try to bite him once he was trapped between its paws.

The inch-thick layer of stone his feet rested on vanished, dropping him another four feet into the void he’d made when he pulled the material for the stone spike out of the earth. With his head below ground level, it no longer mattered if some muscle spasm forced the lion’s jaw to close.

That didn’t happen, for what it was worth. Instead, the guardian, its death confirmed by an explosion of anima rushing into Sorin’s soulspace, collapsed on the spot, dropping all of its multi-ton weight onto the hole Sorin had created and burying him as it caved in under the pressure. Sorin ended up having to dig himself free by tunneling off to the side and coming up around it.

Now that the fight was over, all the fatigue slammed back into him. Sorin had barely crawled out of the ground before he found himself on his back. His chest heaved, and all the pain he’d ignored during the fight demanded his immediate acknowledgement.

Ten minutes wasn’t enough time to recover, but the trial wasn’t over yet. If he didn’t force himself back to his feet, all he’d accomplish was becoming an easy meal for the next monster to wander by. So, with a whimper of pain, he rolled over and climbed to his hands and knees. Then, after a few deep breaths to help him master the fresh wave of agony that movement had inspired, he got his feet under him.

The guardian lion was still every bit as intimidating as it had been in life. If not for the ruin he’d made of its skull, it could have simply been lying there, waiting for the next monster stupid enough to deliver itself to its belly. Despite knowing that he’d injured it everywhere, there wasn’t so much as a scratch on its flanks, back, or legs.

The light was gone from it now, though, and its pale, almost white, fur had darkened back into something more aligned with the normal range of colors lions generally exhibited. Sorin couldn’t help but laugh at himself for missing such an obvious sign.

There was only a single soulprint in the gargantuan creature, which seemed profoundly unfair to him for a moment, but then he realized what it was. If ever there was a sign that the tower favored him, it was right in front of him.

The trembling in his hands had nothing to do with weariness now. He reached out, burying his fingers in the thick mane, and absorbed the soulprint.

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