The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 77

The plan for the first three days was getting on track from where the portal had dumped them. One of the quirks of the tower was that the floors grew bigger as climbers went higher up, so even though Floor 8 wasn’t themed to be giant-sized like Floor 5, it was still a hell of a lot longer run than crossing Floor 2 had been.

The initial leg of the journey saw them running almost directly at the Sol Pillar, which was a lot like running toward the sun, only even more so. Worse, the Sol Pillar never dimmed. It was eternally bright on Floor 8, which meant they received no reprieve. By the time they stopped at the end of the first ‘day,’ they were so light dazed that the team was half blind.

Sorin was alone in the group in having enough anima in his soulspace unattached to anything that he could have pushed Speed Burst up to D-rank to hasten his progress, but he didn’t bother with it. All it would do was result in either leaving everyone else behind or being slightly better rested when the rest of them hit their limits.

“How can you still see?” Rue asked him. “I’m basically running on nothing but Blind Sense now, and the rest of us don’t even have that.”

“Clear Eyes,” Sorin told her. “I made it mostly for Dark Vision and Aquatic Vision, but it’s got a bit of overlap keeping me safe from being light-blinded. The rest is just passive regeneration and endurance to tough it out.”

“He’s right, you know,” Yoru chimed in. “Without that passive regeneration, your eyes would be totally fried by now.”

“Well, maybe not totally, but they’d certainly be in bad shape. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, too.”

“There’s got to be some kind of enchanted item for dealing with this,” Rue complained.

Sorin looked at Yoru, who shrugged back. “Might be something in the vaults back home. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

“We can check on whether that cabinet is finally charged enough to get some work done while we’re there,” Sorin said.

Trees grew strangely with the light source for the floor being a massive central pillar. Instead of shooting straight up, they tended to curve toward the Sol Pillar and present canopies that were more like walls. As a result, forests were like fifty-foot-wide hallways where one side was the shaded ‘bottom’ of the tree branches, and the other was a leafy green barrier.

That shade was the only real respite from the light, so the team nestled between two massive trunks and breathed out a collective sigh of relief. Too bad we can’t just stay in the shadows the whole time, but even if we wanted to jump hurdles constantly, the trail isn’t going in the right direction.

Sorin quickly carved the seven-tower sign on a nearby trunk, then took Yoru and Vendis with him. Yoru always came along, both to report back on their progress and because Morlin was easier to deal with when his son was present. Vendis was coming this particular time to help carry both the loot of their climb and the supplies they intended to bring back.

Vendis went off with one of the house servants to deposit their spoils in the family vault. Sorin wasn’t sure if Morlin was making a profit off this deal or not, but he appreciated the expediency of having almost anything he could want on-hand for immediate use. That was worth a few danirs to him. The biggest issue was that there were a few things Morlin hadn’t been able to acquire, mostly the rarest and priciest soulprints Sorin wanted. With no cash reserves, Sorin couldn’t go hunting for those items himself.

Then again, there might be other issues that need to be addressed, he thought angrily when Morlin strode into the room. They were standing in front of the enchanter’s cabinet while its operator poured anima into it. Given the time table, it should have been ready to be put to use, but it was nowhere close.

The answer to that little mystery was obvious. Morlin was wearing a grand overcoat, one that came down to his calves and was accented with polished, gleaming silver. The coat was some sort of dark leather Sorin didn’t recognize—probably sourced from a monster from one of the higher floors. Whatever it was made of, the craftsmanship was exquisite.

The interior lining was also made of distinctive steel silk. A piece that size would have been impossible to create by even a master enchanter below rank 40. The conclusion was obvious: Morlin had commissioned the piece from the cabinet instead of allowing Sorin’s team to use it first, despite their obvious need for the resource.

“Hello, Father,” Yoru said somewhat stiffly, no doubt having come to the same conclusion but unwilling to challenge Morlin on the matter.

“That’s a very nice coat, Morlin,” Sorin said. “Where’d you get it?”

“Er, this old thing?” Morlin asked, faltering just two steps into the room. “Had it laying around. I thought it’d be nice to put it on for a meeting I just got back from.”

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Sorin didn’t need eyes in the back of his head to see Yoru’s face turn stony. “Nah, you didn’t,” he said.

“I assure you—”

“The coat, maybe. But that’s just a coat. It’s that steel silk lining that’s the expensive part, isn’t it? All one solid piece. No seams or weak points. But, God, the cost to make it… It might literally be priceless. I doubt there’s a person in the whole tower who can actually do it.”

“It’s… tower-forged,” Morlin protested weakly.

“Don’t lie to me, Morlin,” Sorin said, letting cold seep out of his body. “I approached you on the good word of your son. This has been a mutually beneficial partnership, but you need to remember that it is a partnership. You are not in charge. The anima and time wasted making that coat could have gone to producing something that might save one of our lives—maybe even your own son’s.”

The temperature in the room plummeted as Sorin spoke. By the time he’d finished, there was a noticeable chill and small plumes of mist starting to come off people as they rapidly lost heat to the air. Morlin’s face had cycled from surprised to guilty to afraid and finally landed on belligerently angry.

“Now see, here,” he snapped. “Partners also means I get a say. There has to be some benefit for me, too!”

“We are not equal partners,” Sorin told him. “Not even close. When you want to risk your life climbing, we can reconsider the distribution of wealth. And if you do not like that, then we can dissolve our partnership right now. I’ll happily find a new home for my enchanter’s cabinet, and we can do an audit of everything we’ve brought in to see who owes who how much.”

“I will not be spoken to this way in my own home,” Morlin said, drawing himself up to his full height. “I am a rank 22 climber. I earned that through my own blood and sweat, and I demand the respect due to me both for my rank and as head of a high family.”

Sorin did not like politics. He was not good at playing politics. His tolerance for the slimy sorts of behavior politicians engaged in was almost nonexistent. All that was to say that he probably could have found a better way to handle the situation. There was almost certainly a compromise to be made, one that would likely involve appeasing Morlin’s ego to keep him as a willing ally.

Sorin punched him in the face instead.

Morlin staggered backward, more surprised than hurt. A thin trickle of blood ran down from his nose, but it stopped almost instantly. Eyes wide, he reached a hand up to wipe the blood away. “How dare you,” he said, his voice shaking with anger.

“Come on then. You think your rank entitles you to some privileges. You think might makes right. Enforce your will. I want this settled now, one way or another. Give me that beating you think you can.”

“Sorin,” Yoru started to say.

“This is between me, your father, and his overinflated ego. Stay out of it.”

Morlin gestured for his son to stay back and faced Sorin directly. “You know what? Fine. You talk about my ego? I’ve had enough of yours. You’re not better than the rest of us. Maybe you were in your old life, if all of that is even true, but guess what? That’s over now. You want a thrashing to help you learn your place? I’m happy to give you one. Welcome to my tower.”

He lunged forward, flames igniting in a blazing aura around him. The distance between the two men was measured in mere feet, and Morlin was faster than anyone else Sorin had fought since being cast back down to rank 0. The flames pushed back the frozen domain of Sorin’s Still Winter, effectively countering it and keeping Morlin moving at full speed.

The look of surprise on his face when his lunge was stopped cold by a second punch directly to his nose was almost comical. Morlin’s head snapped back again, but this time Sorin didn’t pull the punch. He hit hard enough that Morlin’s feet flew out in the opposite direction. He flipped completely around and landed on his stomach instead of his back.

Sorin pumped more anima into Still Winter, enough to snuff out the blazing aura Morlin still had going and start to coalesce a layer of ice on the prone man. That wouldn’t stop a rank 22, of course. If Morlin had any kind of competent build—and Sorin assumed the head of a major climbing family would—he’d be back on his feet long before Still Winter could entomb him.

He wasn’t trying to kill the man, but he also couldn’t afford to hold back against an opponent who had ten full ranks on him. Force Edge sliced through the floor, angled straight to strike Morlin’s skull where his extremely fancy and durable coat wouldn’t protect him.

“No!” Yoru cried out.

Morlin let out an explosive bellow and surged to his feet amidst a cloud of shattered ice chips. The blade of force passed between his feet before dissipating against the far wall, but both climbers were too busy to trace its progress. Sorin bobbed and wove between heavy punches that should have been slow, but which Morlin snapped out like cracking whips.

Strong and fast, but predictable. Were you always this bad in a scrap, or is this just years of letting yourself get fat and lazy at home?

Sorin didn’t have the raw strength, but he could match Morlin’s speed. They exchanged a hundred blows in a matter of seconds, and Sorin came out the victor. He blocked or dodged every single shot, but Morlin took a dozen hits in return. Only half of them really connected with a vulnerable spot, but it had to bruise the old man’s pride.

“Rah!” Morlin shouted, puffing his chest out and raising his arms overhead.

Force billowed up beneath everyone in the room, throwing them all up into the air. The enchanter squealed in terror and clung to the armoire, which Sorin could only hope was tough enough to take the abuse. He’d used it as a capsule to tunnel through dirt and stone, though; a bit of rough handling probably wouldn’t break it.

“Father!” Yoru yelled.

Morlin was focused on Sorin to the exclusion of all else, though. The second part of his combo was readily apparent even without the ability to sense his aura. Power gathered in his fist, and his next punch caught Sorin just as he was coming back down to the floor.

Sorin twisted, free casting Air Step at the same time to push him farther out of the way. Morlin compensated, and though the full force of the strike was wasted, enough of it clipped Sorin to send him spinning through the air to crash heavily against the back wall.

“Now stay down if you know what’s good for you, you little shit,” Morlin sneered.

“Please. Give me some credit. You’ll have to do a lot better than that,” Sorin said, easily regaining his feet.