Book 3, Chapter 59

It wasn’t as easy as just running forward and hacking into the cord with his sword, of course. Anyone could have done that, given the right equipment. If all it took to close a rift was severing the cord linking it to a single void creature, Samael would have taken care of the issue years ago. He’d had access to all the tools Sorin had, more or less.

So, while it was a mistake to overestimate a voidling’s intelligence, Sorin didn’t approach the problem assuming he had a straight route to the solution. The giant, predictably, lunged forward the moment he passed whatever imaginary threshold it had set. That was odd behavior—void creatures weren’t known for holding back—but Sorin chalked it up more to a limitation of the rift than a conscious, strategic decision on the void giant’s part.

Curious, Sorin backpedaled fifty feet. While he didn’t expect the giant to cut off pursuit just because its target had moved farther away from the rift, it would make things a lot easier if it did. With the field empty of other void creatures, it would be relatively safe to have someone else act as bait to draw it away from the center so that he could swoop in from the side, sever the cord, and hopefully seal the rift completely.

Whether that would destroy the void giant was an entirely different question, and not one Sorin was prepared to answer. Knowing his luck, the answer would be ‘no.’ Still, if it worked, he’d happily exploit the flaw in whatever laws governed void rift operations just to ensure the rift was closed before he engaged the giant.

It did not work, at least not the way he’d hoped. The giant didn’t even hesitate to blow past the imaginary line Sorin had painted across the field in his mind, but it did do something unexpected once it got there. It slammed to a halt fifty or so feet away from him, its whole body churning with liquid momentum as its limbs whipped around in a tight circle.

That’s weird. Normally, I’d say it was pivoting to a new target, but there’s no one else close en—Holy shit!

The giant spun once, shedding tentacles of void-stuff in the process. They sprayed out in every direction like deadly black missiles threatening to disintegrate anything they splashed onto, and they didn’t seem to care about things like ballistic arcs or air friction. That made them fast and direct, deadly and almost impossible to dodge.

That might have been a problem if not for the fact that there were thousands of spells that acted the same way. Sorin was surprised that a void creature could do something like that, but he was well-practiced in how to react.

The instant void-stuff was flung free from the giant’s main body, he pushed more anima into Lesser Aspect of Grace to boost his speed. By the time the loose tentacle reached him, he was already ten feet to the side. It slammed into the dirt like an enormous missile of water, splashing in every direction.

Then eight voidlings rose up out of the puddles of churning darkness. Those at least acted precisely as expected and immediately turned to attack Sorin. He’d never seen a larger void creature break back down into smaller ones before, but the sages had long theorized it was a possibility. At this point in Sorin’s life, he’d grown numb to being surprised when one of them turned out to be right.

Eight voidlings were not a threat, not these days. The problem was that the giant had thrown a dozen tentacles loose, and while the one coming directly at him had been the biggest, there were groups of three to five voidlings popping up elsewhere, too. That included no less than three groups near the rest of Sorin’s team, and he wasn’t sure they were in a state to handle that.

Just going to have to trust them, he told himself as he rushed the voidlings near him.

As aggressive as Sorin’s reaction was, it was equally matched by the voracious little creatures charging to meet him halfway. Voidlings didn’t hesitate, not unless they were tethered to a giant rift floating in the sky, at least, and their only constant was unflinching and untiring pursuit of anima.

Sorin shredded them in under ten seconds, just in time to deal with a second group that had reached him. Those were also reduced to scraps of void-stuff that evaporated like mist on a hot day, but by then, the giant had made its next move.

Its volley had cost it some of its size, and in the time Sorin spent taking care of a dozen voidlings, it had somehow pulled more mass from the rift and regrown. It hadn’t stopped at its former size, either. Now it was slightly bigger, and it put the new void-stuff to good use. Instead of spawning more minions for Sorin to tear through, it started shaking in place. Each convulsion threw black mist into the air, which spread out to coat the whole field.

It didn’t have the targeted hunger of a voidling, but it was pervasive. Within seconds, the giant was centered in a cloud a hundred feet in diameter, and it was only growing bigger. Sorin didn’t need to set foot inside that to know that it would dissolve his anima just the same as if he let a voidling jump on his back.

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That’s a pretty good defense, but how long can you keep it up? If it’s draining you dry, I can outlast you just by staying out of your range.

That assumed the rift wouldn’t keep pouring more void-stuff into its guardian, however, and that was not a question Sorin could say he knew the answer to. Waiting to find out could give the giant all the time it needed to undo all the hard work they’d done thinning the ranks. In fact, he was willing to bet that stalling was exactly the wrong course of action in this situation.

He was going to have to accept some soul damage as the price of doing business if he wanted to win this. Everything the giant was throwing at him was a distraction. It’d need to be dealt with eventually, of course, but if he didn’t lock in on the priority—severing that cord connecting the rift and its minion—there wasn’t much chance of them winning.

So, he did something that an outside observer might call stupid. Judging from the reaction of his team, even though they were distracted with their own miniature voidling swarms, they thought the same thing. He ignored them, though. They’d understand once they had a moment to think about it.

He didn’t plunge directly into the mist. While it might have been faster to cut through it on foot, it was already too thick for him to see through. The last thing he needed was to smack face-first into a void beast cleverly positioned and waiting for him. Void creatures weren’t known for their ability to fly, however, and the rift was stationary. He could guarantee a direct line to the target if he came in from above.

Wind Strider pooled beneath him, and each step threw him another ten feet into the air. It was the work of moments to reach the sky above the center of the void mist. He plunged straight down, aiming to carve out a chunk of the cord tethering the giant to the rift. Since he couldn’t confirm the giant’s position, he gave it better odds of striking it close to the rift. If the creature was too far out to one side or the other, he might not slice through it, but he’d at least nick it.

He didn’t even make it into the mist before something flew out of the darkness and smacked into him. That was the moment Sorin realized that while voidlings might not fly, the giant had already proven its ability to throw them. Void-stuff reshaped itself into three voidlings, one clinging to his chest, one to his arm, and one on his back.

Whether it was luck or intention, the giant hit his sword arm. A few different responses flashed through Sorin’s mind, the most likely of which to work was to simply toss the sword over to his other hand. But voidlings didn’t really weigh anything, so other than the awkward angle of trying to slash at his own arm, its perch didn’t really restrict Sorin’s movement.

He stabbed the voidling clinging to his chest with the sword, and activated Void Eater for the other two. He’d been using it in conjunction with the blade, letting the soulprint and the weapon reinforce each other, but that wasn’t necessary. It was just convenient. Void Eater was a soulprint, and he could wield it just as easily with no weapon at all.

That didn’t mean it was free. Even with Void Resistance, being in direct contact with three voidlings at once was excruciatingly painful. Sorin pushed that aside; pain was an old acquaintance, and he’d give it its due once the rift was closed. A few seconds later, all three of the creatures fell away into scraps of black void-stuff, freeing Sorin to resume his dive.

Sorin wasn’t happy to learn that he’d been absolutely right about the corrosive nature of the void mist. If anything, he’d underestimated how potent it was. Even keeping Void Eater active and emanating off his body on top of Void Resistance wasn’t enough to insulate him. The soulprint devoured void-stuff, but not at a rate fast enough to protect him from this.

It was a good thing he didn’t plan to stay for long. Normally, slashing through a voidling felt about the same as slashing through empty air. They didn’t have weight, and they didn’t have physical mass. It was like fighting an air elemental in some ways. With that in mind, Sorin wasn’t sure he’d be able to actually tell if he’d severed the cord coming out of the rift by feel alone.

To be safe, he hacked through it on the way down, and then, trusting his own judgment that he’d positioned himself correctly, took a half step forward and sliced again as he leaped back up. Pain was his only touchstone—it got worse when he reached where he knew the cord was—but it also guided his attack. It let him know that the job wasn’t done, that he needed to take a third pass.

Even blinded by the void mist, he could feel it when the cord snapped. It was a difficult sensation to describe, but that was often the case for climbers with esoteric sensory soulprints. This time, Sorin suspected it was Eldritch Tongue giving him feedback, and he likened it to being in an apparently empty room but knowing someone was watching him.

That feeling of being watched didn’t vanish, but it shrunk. Instead of sensing a hidden predator stalking him, it was more like confronting a monster out in the open. Sorin couldn’t say that made a lot of sense, not even to him, but he’d long since learned to just accept that sometimes it was hard to articulate what his soulprints told him.

What was important was that by the time he climbed out of the mist a second later, it was visibly thinning. He could spot the void giant crouched down in it, tentacles growing out of its arm and reaching for him. They were still difficult to track as they thinned toward the tips, but the tested-and-true strategy of putting some distance between himself and the void worked just as well now as it always had before.

Sorin practically crashed into the dirt a few hundred feet from the giant. The loose voidlings were on him immediately, ready to take advantage of his weakness and disorientation, but his body worked to keep him safe even without his conscious desire. Soon, the mist was gone entirely and the remaining voidlings were dispersed, leaving nothing but a team of climbers, a lone giant, and a rift that was maybe a quarter of the size it had started out at.