Book 3, Chapter 61

Lanir was leading a team of three dozen climbers spread out in a line between the portal hub and the rift Sorin had closed. They were human in mind only, their bodies having been twisted into something unrecognizable by stacked mutagenic soulprints. If Sorin hadn’t known they were climbers, he’d have thought they were a new type of monster.

They were about eight feet tall and covered in fine, flexible scales. Chitin plates provided additional protection where they didn’t need articulation. Instead of hair, they had a mane of spikes that started at their scalp and flowed down their backs, extending to the tips of their tails. Those were prehensile and thinned to the thickness of a finger at the end.

That tail held a metal blade modeled after some monsters that were smart enough to wield tools, with a guard that covered the last six inches or so of flesh and allowed the climber to keep a grip on it no matter what. Each of them also dual-wielded long, slashing swords that had two parallel blades coming out of the hilt.

It was all optimized for fighting void creatures, which was the whole point. They had a long reach and the ability to flense multiple layers of void-stuff off a target with each strike. There was room for improvement, but Sorin assumed Samael had factored the cost against how much more effective it would make them and decided it was better to field weaker units in greater number.

Behind them were six devices that looked something like giant crossbows, except the ammunition was a stack of edged metal plates, and each arm seemed to be tied back independently. If Sorin understood what he was seeing, it functioned more like a pair of slings that whipped two of the plates forward at a time, presumably with the goal of slicing through void creatures from a distance.

He couldn’t imagine they were very accurate, but given the size of the plates—each one was three feet across—he supposed they might not need to be. Human climbers could have done a cleaner job, but if the throwers were enchanted in some way, then the equipment’s purpose was to reinforce lacking numbers, not win the battle.

A single order from Lanir had the whole line standing down and making a hole for Sorin’s team to pass through. The commander met them there, his brow furrowed as he looked them over. “Don’t tell me you went through the Antechamber. I thought we all agreed it was too risky.”

“I stand by that,” Sorin said. “The tower decided otherwise. It actually pulled us into the Antechamber after we defeated the Floor 23 guardian.”

“I... didn’t know it could do that,” Lanir admitted. “Terrible luck...”

Sorin didn’t bother to correct him. It had been no accident, but explaining everything the tower was capable of would take more time than he wanted to give right now. “It dropped us relatively close by, at least. There was only one nest between us and the hub.”

Enlightenment brightened Lanir’s eyes. “You destroyed it? That’s what we felt earlier?”

Sorin gave him a short nod. “It shouldn’t threaten this position anymore. There’s nothing left.”

Lanir shook his head. “The rifts shrink when you kill voidlings, but they always grow again. You’ve bought us a few days, maybe a week, and that’s not nothing.”

“No, you don’t understand. There’s nothing left. We closed the rift.”

“You... can’t... Huh... We expected competency, but not this. Samael himself only ever closed a handful of rifts, and always with a great cost of lives to weaken it first.”

“Lucky him to have that option,” Sorin muttered. “We’ll be doing it the hard way, but for the moment, we’d like to rest.”

“Of course. Do you know when you’ll be ready to come back?” Lanir asked.

“Not for a few days. Probably a week. I’m not even sure if that’s going to be enough.”

“Perhaps we could meet tomorrow at the headquarters on Floor 0, just to go over everything and figure out how it alters our plans.”

That sounded like torture to Sorin, but he gave a reluctant nod anyway. In truth, he needed Lanir and his mutagenic climbers, just like he needed Galdred Galdyrin and his supposed friend-circle who were all eager to help. Making time for them was the least he could do, and it wasn’t like he’d feel any better lazing around in a bed.

“See you then,” he said shortly.

* * *

“Why didn’t you rent a place with more beds?” Yoru asked. There was no accusation in his voice, just honest curiosity.

“Didn’t seem important at the time,” Nemari explained. “I wasn’t expecting us to still be using this house by the time we got to the Void Wall.”

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“Technically, Floor 25 is the Void Wall. This is just overflow spilling down over the last few months since Samael’s... I don’t even know if I want to say his demise. Is he actually dead?”

“If he’s not, he wishes he was,” Sorin said. “Do we have another place to stay, or should we just start laying out cloaks and blankets on the floor? It won’t make much difference either way.”

“I could go grab a few mattresses,” Azlo offered. “If we take over the kitchen, there’s enough room to lay them out.”

That was about as good a plan as any, and Azlo set off with enough enthusiasm to make Sorin jealous. His every breath made him want to groan in pain, but their front-liner was still fresh and strong.

“We need to decide what to do about him,” Nemari said after Azlo was gone. “He doesn’t have the protections we have. If he fights with us, the void will grind him down to nothing.”

“Let him join the other climbers if he wants to keep fighting. It’s not like he’s the only one up there who doesn’t have the tower looking out for them,” Rue pointed out.

That wasn’t a terrible idea, though Sorin thought Azlo would do better attached to Galdred’s group than the mutagenic climbers still loyal to the Hellions. Their fighting style didn’t leave room for a front-liner, mostly because the void didn’t care about things like armor and shields. Azlo was an excellent addition to the team in any other scenario, but his build wasn’t really designed to fight void creatures.

Of course, pawning him off on Galdred relied on the assumption that the Galdyrin family heir would actually make good on his promise to help. That had been one of the things Sorin would have followed up on if the tower hadn’t forced him directly to Floor 24. It could wait a day or two, though.

Or maybe ten or twelve, he silently amended as a fresh wave of pain radiated out through his soulspace. It was so all-encompassing that Sorin could feel it from his finger tips to his scalp, and it remained a constant, steady ache that showed no signs of fading.

Dimensional storage removed a ton of logistics challenges, which was one of the reasons Sorin had prioritized it when they’d had the option. Now that the cabinet was damaged, possibly irreparably, he was glad the entire team had been outfitted with it. When Azlo returned emptyhanded, none of them questioned him. Nor were they surprised when he pulled three mattresses out of nowhere to flop down in a row across the kitchen floor.

“Get some rest guys. I’ll stand guard,” he said.

Sorin knew it was important to talk to the man, but his body had finally taken enough. Not even the pain of his soulspace being scoured could keep him awake once he finally gave himself permission to close his eyes.

* * *

It didn’t surprise Sorin that Odric had woken back up first. He was in the best condition thanks to the defensive nature of his armament, and Sorin briefly wondered why the tower hadn’t seen fit to equip them all with something like that. All he could do was add it to his mental list of questions to ask if he ever got the chance.

What did surprise him, though, was how good he felt. That wasn’t to say he was recovered—far from it—but given his own experiences with even light soul damage, he knew he was feeling better than he had any right to.

And there’s another question to ask the tower. That’s a list that just won’t stop growing.

Odric and Azlo were sitting at the kitchen table, taking up what little space they’d freed up by removing one of the mattresses. A pot of tea rested between them, though neither seemed that interested in drinking any. The steam from their cups had cooled before Sorin had even woken, telling him that Odric had been up at least long enough for that.

Because if Azlo had made it, it would be bubbling, and the house would smell like a rotting corpse. I’ve never met such a terrible cook in my entire life.

“It’s been about a day and a half,” Azlo said without looking over.

“Ah, damn it. I’m late for that meeting.”

Shaking his head, Azlo told him, “I already ran over and told them you were still recovering once Odric woke up a few hours ago. I also picked up some food on the way back if you feel up to it.”

“One minute,” Sorin said. “I need to see how things look first.”

He dropped into his soulspace and grimaced at what he found. The mosaic was worn down and faded, the colors bleached out and some of the tiles missing. His own soulprints were similarly rough, with rotting frames, splotchy paint, and an odd, mildewy smell coming from them. It wasn’t real, of course. There was no mildew in his soulspace. That was just how his mind chose to interpret the damage.

He'd recover, given enough time. In fact, he was already making incredible progress toward just that. His best guess was that Anima Tap was the culprit, if only because it was glowing softly as lines of tower-anima ran between the tiles of the mosaic. The parts closest to the lines were in the best shape—vibrant colors, whole tiles, and no gaps. The damage got more extensive the farther from Anima Top it was.

Hopefully that extends to my soulprints as well. I lost probably a quarter of a rank’s worth of anima just from exposure. It’d be nice if the tower replaced that, too.

The downside was that it did mean his speedy recovery was probably limited to just him. The others would take the normal amount of time, probably two or three times longer than he needed. Already, Sorin’s brain was working to adapt to the new information. He envisioned a rotation where he split his efforts between three or four support teams, always taking the brunt of the damage to take advantage of Anima Tap’s recovery mechanism.

Whether it would be enough to outpace the rifts on Floor 24 was a different story. There was also the fact that he didn’t have additional support teams, not yet, and he wasn’t sure Lanir would give him a squad of defenders to take the fight to the next rift. Maintaining a strong presence around the portal hub was important, too. If they lost that, they’d lose access to the entire floor, allowing the void to spread unchecked.

A week, Sorin decided, looking around at his soulspace.

The others wouldn’t be ready by then. That meant he had a week to find five other climbers to support his next push so that his team could take the time they needed to get back to full strength. It also meant that Sorin needed better strategies for the next rift, because he couldn’t have cleared the first one on his own. Whoever he recruited to help wouldn’t be nearly as effective as his real team, and that meant he needed to pick up the slack.

He joined the other two at the table and accepted a plate with some sort of grilled meat on a skewer resting on it. “You ever get tired of unidentifiable monster meat and wild fruit?” he asked no one in particular. “Maybe a nice vegetable or two once in a while could offset it? No? Maybe it’s just me.”