Book 3, Chapter 58

Dodging the void giant’s limbs wasn’t hard. Even keeping out of range of the voidlings still crawling all over each other below was easy enough with Wind Strider holding him up in the air. The real issues were the same ones every climber dealt with when it came to fighting a massive void creature: the debilitating aura that ate away their anima and the fact that they tended to spout new tentacles out of whatever part of their body was closest.

Usually, that second problem was mitigated by the standard tactics of slicing away at the edge of the monstrosity to shave off small pieces of void-stuff and whittle it down to nothing. That took time, however, which circled back to the first problem and was a major reason void creatures were so difficult to put down.

Sorin’s unique advantages only compounded the issues. While it was fantastic that he could just jab his sword into a voidling and watch it evaporate in under a second, the strategy came with the drawback of leaving him immobile. That made the larger varieties, the ones that could fight back, far more difficult to kill.

His solution was to do what he’d always done, except that instead of carving off a thin layer of void or severing the tip of a tentacle, he swooped in to stab his sword into the darkness, submerging it all the way to the hilt and then ripping it out sideways. The void giant almost seemed to collapse in on itself each time Sorin hit it.

But then he’d dart away to get some space and find a new angle of attack, and a few more voidlings would latch onto the giant’s leg. Any progress Sorin had made was immediately erased as the giant not only regained its lost size, but continued to expand. It was already approaching the point where it was starting to slump over onto all fours, a sure sign that it was near behemoth class.

Well, shit. This isn’t working. It might be time for a fighting retreat.

They’d all hoped for a quick, easy victory, but pragmatism demanded they plan for a defeat. While destroying a few hundred voidlings was undoubtedly a good start to an extended campaign, Sorin wasn’t trying to fight one of those. His goal was simply to close the rift. If and when he managed that, the remaining voidlings could be addressed. Until that time, his understanding was that more void would simply pour into the tower to replace the lost numbers, and it would do so faster than Sorin himself could recover from the abrasions on his soulspace.

They weren’t in the best shape, physically speaking. The fight against the Floor 23 guardian had taken some of their strength, and the strange, almost frightening encounter with Samael’s body serving as the tower’s mouthpiece had been draining in its own way. It was possible they could approach this fight with the exact same tactics and prevail if they came back after a week or two of rest.

It was equally possible it was now or never. The dregs of Samael’s army were only going to keep shrinking, and once they were gone, the void would grow unchecked. Sorin and his team might have reached Floor 24 in time to prevent its the total collapse, but that didn’t mean the clock had stopped ticking just yet.

Come on, Sorin. Make a decision. Stay and fight or run away.

He couldn’t kill the giant, not the way things were going. It was growing faster than he could break it down, but the voidlings weren’t endless. They’d been reduced to half their original numbers, and that more from sacrificing themselves to empower the giant than anything his team had done. It would reach behemoth size at this rate, of that Sorin had no doubt.

But he could take a behemoth, providing it was just one behemoth. If there were still a few hundred voidlings supporting it, or if the giant that was hunkered down at the base of the rift joined in, the odds shifted away from Sorin. So it was really a question of how many void creatures would be left on the field once they were done globbing together.

Fight, he decided.

Sorin rolled through the air, pivoting and diving as he tried to keep out of the grasping tendrils erupting all around him. Even getting too close was harmful, but the void giant seemed to value quantity over accuracy. It just flailed around in his general direction, content to chase after Sorin without ever making any real attempts to coordinate the limbs and hit him from multiple directions.

He had to fight off the reflexive urge to bring Force Weaver and Still Winter into the fight. The former wouldn’t help him parry incoming attacks or sever tendrils of void, and the latter would only slow him down while providing his enemy with a free meal. As annoying as it was to be locked out of so much of his toolkit, Sorin was too experienced to slip into old habits, and he kept his moves firmly physical.

His sword worked in conjunction with the one ability that actually did something. Though Void Eater wasn’t enough to halt the giant’s growth, every chunk it took out of the creature was one less voidling’s worth of extra power it had.

A few hundred feet back, the rest of his team were working together to thin out the remaining voidlings. Their own fight had actually gotten easier as so many of the little waist-high entities had abandoned that front in order to empower their champion, which left Nemari taking free shots at targets ignoring her to rush in the opposite direction.

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Odric, Rue, and Yoru were a triangle around her, each side a wall that held those few voidlings still interested at bay. Or rather, they were beacons, since there was no real standing up to a thing made of living shadows that killed by proximity. They drew attention and destroyed anything that took the bait, leaving Nemari to unload at full strength on the crowd.

It just wasn’t enough. The giant, already slumping, abruptly hunched and fell forward onto four limbs. A new field of tentacles, all of which were at least twenty feet long, sprouted out of its back. They writhed about, reaching blindly in Sorin’s general direction and twining around each other as they merged and separated in a random attempt to create longer limbs that could reach the meal they sensed overhead.

And there’s the behemoth. Crap. There’s at least another hundred voidlings left. This thing’s not done growing yet.

Unlike the last time he’d fought one, there was no abundant source of anima to distract the behemoth. The void had already drained the land dry, and they’d yet to see a single monster that might draw a void creature’s attention. Sorin wouldn’t have such an easy time with this one, especially not with reinforcements still pouring in.

Every swing cut away more of the void-stuff. Every dodge kept him alive for another second. It should have been terrifying, really. A single mistake could mean death, and no amount of healing magic could fix what the void would do if it got hold of him. More than practically any other danger in the tower, the void was suffering personified.

For Sorin, the solution was simple. As long as he didn’t make a mistake, and as long as the giant watching from a few hundred feet away didn’t interfere, he’d be fine. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a situation like this, and it wouldn’t be the last.

So he balanced on the knife’s edge with death waiting for him if he should fall, and he went about his business with a workman-like enthusiasm. ‘Cut, dodge, cut’ became his sole focus, a mantra that kept his mind from wavering as he broke the behemoth down piece by piece.

All the while, the pain in his soul kept growing. In fact, it started to get worse faster, probably because of the behemoth’s size and power. Somehow, the amalgamation of hundreds of voidlings into one singular entity had given it more strength than they’d possessed individually, and Sorin’s soul felt the difference.

Time worked against him in other ways, too. It still wasn’t safe to descend to ground level, and Wind Strider stole another sip of his anima with every movement. The tide of voidlings had slowed, leaving a thin carpet of the little creatures spread across the ground. Perhaps the entity thought its avatar was enough to crush Sorin and didn’t want to go through whatever effort it took to join or separate out the component parts, or perhaps this was some sort of tactic it had thought up in whatever passed for its mind.

Either way, it was safer to stay in the air for as long as Sorin could, which at the rate he was going would be no more than a minute. At that point, he’d be forced to land, and he’d have to let go of his enhanced speed, strength, and endurance.

One minute to finish this fight, or thirty seconds to break away and run. But that would leave everyone else behind. We’re past the point of no return. I need to kill this thing or die trying.

Sorin adjusted his strategy. Everything was a risk, but before he’d balanced his dodges to give him as much distance as he could to mitigate the erosion of his soulspace. Now he trimmed the margins until they were hair thin, all just to grab hold of micro-seconds of time he could use to attack. It was going to cost him later, but he’d be alive to pay the price.

I hope.

The behemoth was shrinking, of that there was no doubt. Without constant reinforcement, Sorin was tearing it apart one strike at a time. Void Eater and the empowered tower-blue sword working in conjunction ripped void-stuff free at an incredible pace, far faster than when he’d had just the sword alone back on Floor 4.

It felt like it took hours, but the whole battle barely lasted five minutes from start to finish. The biggest hiccup in taking out the behemoth was that at some point it started snatching up more voidlings to add to its size in an attempt to counteract Void Eater, but that just let Sorin finally take the battle back to ground level. From there, it was just a matter of time.

“Sorin,” Rue called out across the now-empty field of crumbling, black soil.

She limped forward, slower than he’d ever seen her. The others were similarly pained, but she’d taken the worst of it. Without Odric’s defensive shield to protect her or the range Nemari and Yoru gained from their own weapons, every second she fought cost her a little bit more of her anima. She was practically back down to rank 21 levels at this point.

Sorin had weathered the battle a little bit better, but his own soul ached, too. A few days of rest would probably be enough to get him back to full, not that it mattered right now. They’d cleared the battlefield, but the rift was still open, and the void giant in front of it wasn’t getting any smaller on its own. If anything, it seemed to be growing larger despite having no other voidlings nearby to integrate into its body.

Is it drawing power directly from the rift itself? Sorin wondered.

The tower had explained that closing rifts grew easier the less void creatures that were left. Whatever connection they had to the controlling entity on the other side helped stabilize the rift and keep it open, perhaps even allowed it to grow wider. Sorin wasn’t sure exactly how it all worked, but he figured he was going to find out in the next minute or two.

“You should all start heading toward the portal hub,” he said.

“What about you? Your aura is... uh... not... good.”

“I can keep going a little longer. There’s only one left.”

“We’ll help,” Yoru announced, stepping forward with only slightly less of a limp than Rue herself had.

“You’ve done enough. I’ve got this.”

Ignoring the pain radiating through his very being, Sorin turned and started marching across the black, empty field. The giant watched him approach, in no way hindered by its lack of eyes. It stood to its full height and took a step forward, finally moving away from the rift and revealing a thick cord running from its back into the darkness.

Well, that looks important. Let’s find out what happens if I cut through it.