Chapter 272: Treacherous Tower
The old man stood only a few steps away from the exit, his eyes moving rapidly between Kael and the dark doorway carved into the beacon behind him. For the briefest moment, the fear on his face looked almost pitiful. He had torn down the bridge, left three people stranded over an abyss, and sprinted until his lungs felt ready to burst, all because he had convinced himself that Kael would be the one to throw him away first. Now, seeing the same enormous bastard standing in front of him with Christy and Hakim still alive and clinging to his back, the old man looked as if the desert itself had decided to mock him.
Then his gaze shifted toward the threshold behind him, and some of that terror drained away.
He was still closer.
That single thought settled him enough to straighten his back. His breath remained ragged and his face had gone red from exertion, but he forced out a strained laugh as Kael lowered himself enough for Christy and Hakim to dismount. Christy landed poorly on her injured leg and had to catch herself against Kael’s arm, while Hakim stepped away more steadily, immediately looking from the old man to the open exit behind him.
The old man saw that look and laughed again, this time with a little more life in it. "Don’t stand there staring at me like that. I did what I had to do," he said, raising one shaking hand before any of them could speak. "I’m sorry we were put in such a shit position, truly, but I’m not sorry for wanting to live. Not one bit. You would have done the same if you were in my place."
Christy’s face twisted with disgust. "No, I fucking wouldn’t."
"You say that because you didn’t have to make the choice," the old man snapped back, but his eyes kept drifting toward Kael rather than her. "You had him carrying you through half the trial. You had him feeding you, protecting you, hauling your injured ass through every danger that came our way. Don’t pretend you were ever in the same position as me."
Kael rolled one shoulder, the muscles in his arms still protesting from the climb and the fight below. The Stone Rune had made the ascent possible without the cliff collapsing beneath his weight, but carrying two people up the ravine immediately after fighting the Stone Maw had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit. The old man seemed to read his silence as hesitation, or weakness, because the smugness in his expression grew a little stronger.
"I lived," the old man said, breathing through a grin that looked far too wide for his face. "That’s what matters here. This tower doesn’t care if I played fair. It doesn’t care if your feelings got hurt. It said the first three people to reach the exit proceed, and I made it here before you. That means I get to leave. I get to survive, and once I walk through that door, everything will be fine."
"Fine?" Christy repeated, looking toward the broken horizon where the ravine separated them from the desert behind. "You cut the bridge while we were on it."
"And you are still alive," he replied immediately. "So stop acting like I murdered you."
"You tried."
"I tried to save myself!" the old man shouted, his voice cracking under the strain of having to justify something he clearly knew was vile. He stabbed a finger toward Kael. "And I was right to do it. Look at him. Look at what he just did. He climbed down that rift, survived whatever was in the bottom, and brought both of you back up before I could even enter the gate. Do you think someone like that needs you? Do you think he was ever going to risk his own progress for an old man who couldn’t offer him anything?"
Hakim said nothing, but his posture changed slightly. It was small enough that Christy did not notice. Kael did. The Saharan’s attention had moved from the old man to him, the same quiet appraisal he had shown ever since the ravine, only now it had an unpleasant edge to it.
The old man saw it too, and immediately pushed harder. Fear had made him betray them. Now that betrayal had failed to keep them away, desperation was making him useful in the worst possible direction.
"You know I’m right," he said to Hakim. "He doesn’t need me, and he doesn’t need you either. Not anymore. You were useful in the desert, sure, but the desert is behind us now. What use does he have for a guide after this? Once there are only three places, he will have to choose who does not make it through. You think he’ll choose her?"
His gaze went toward Christy with a nasty little smile.
"Not after she spent the last few days being his bitch."
The air shifted before Christy could respond.
Kael did not shout. He did not rush forward. He only turned his head toward the old man, and whatever the man had been about to say next died in his throat. Heat had begun to collect around Kael’s right gauntlet, subtle at first, just a faint ripple in the air around his fingers. Then the Fire Rune answered the anger running through him, and a dull orange glow crawled between the plates of metal covering his hand.
"I warned you once already," Kael said. His voice was low, tired, and far more dangerous for the lack of volume. "Whatever you think happened between the two of us is none of your business. She isn’t something you get to name because you’re scared and looking for someone lower than you."
The old man swallowed, then forced himself to look dismissive. "What are you going to do about it? Kill me here? That only proves what I said." He stepped backward, close enough now that the darkness of the doorway almost framed his shoulders. "Besides, the next stage is solo again. I won’t be seeing that ugly mug of yours ever again. You can threaten me all you like, but I’m out. You cannot touch me once I leave."
Christy reached for one of her daggers, but Kael lifted his free hand slightly, stopping her without looking away from the old man. She looked ready to argue, anger burning across her expression, but something in Kael’s stance told her not to interfere.
Hakim, however, did not look at Christy. His attention remained fixed on the glow gathering around Kael’s right arm. The old man’s words were stupid, cowardly, and born from panic, but that did not make every part of them impossible. Kael was the strongest among them by an absurd margin. He had carried them, saved them, and just returned from an abyss with enough strength left to threaten the one man who had tried to abandon them. If Kael decided that Hakim was the unnecessary fourth, there was no honest way for Hakim to stop him.
Slowly, careful to keep the movement out of Kael’s direct line of sight, Hakim slid one hand into the folds of his clothes and toward his pocket.
Kael’s right arm grew brighter.
The old man’s face tightened. Whatever bravado he had managed to gather fractured as he saw the fire coiling around Kael’s gauntlet, taking shape in a way that promised the distance between them would not matter. He had thought the exit protected him because it was close. He had thought a few steps were enough to put him beyond consequence. The moment he saw magic forming, all those assumptions collapsed.
"Stay back!" he shouted, stumbling sideways rather than deeper into the doorway at first. "I won! You hear me? I got here first!"
Kael kept his arm raised. He did not release the spell, but he also did not let the fire fade. "You got to the door first," he replied. "That isn’t the same as being safe."
The old man mistook the warning for a threat. Panic overcame what little thought he had left. He pushed away from the direction of Kael’s gathering flame and turned toward the exit, scrambling into the space immediately before the dark opening. His foot struck the stone threshold hard enough to make him stumble, but relief returned to his face the second he realized he was still standing.
He laughed, loud and breathless, the sound almost hysterical as he turned back toward them. "You missed your chance!" he shouted. "I’m here! I’m out! You can keep your whore and your desert rat, because I don’t need any of you anymore!"
Kael’s eyes narrowed.
Christy cursed and stepped forward.
Hakim’s hand tightened around whatever he had been reaching for.
Then the beacon moved.
At first it was only a deep, metallic groan beneath the stone, too heavy to belong to any door opening normally. The old man’s laughter faltered as the floor beneath him sank the slightest amount, locking his feet into place before he understood that anything had happened. His eyes dropped toward the threshold, and for one confused moment his expression seemed to ask why the exit had chosen to hold him back when he was already safe.
Two sections of the beacon wall split apart.
From beneath the ground, massive slabs of black iron erupted upward on either side of him, each one taller than a wagon and lined with spikes thicker than a man’s arm. They rose with such sudden force that the old man managed only half a scream before the mechanism snapped shut.
The collision was deafening.
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