The battle was over. The Black Walls were more red than black by this point, and the whole hall stank of spilled innards mixed with the coppery tang of far, far too much blood. Miraculously, everyone Sorin wanted to be alive was alive, and everyone he wanted dead was dead. It was about as ideal an outcome to such a rough fight as he could hope for.
There remained the question of how no less than seven vampires had come together, and why they’d appeared in front of Sorin’s team. And for that, he had a guess that he was eager to check on, just as soon as everyone was capable of walking on their own.
“Do you remember the manticore on Floor 1?” Sorin asked.
“It would be hard to forget,” Nemari said, touching a hand to her chest where she’d taken two spikes from the monster’s tail.
“Remember all the problems we had with monsters running into us?”
Nemari’s breath hitched, and she looked up sharply. “You think someone…”
“Maybe not on purpose, but yeah.”
It wasn’t hard to believe. Some climbing team had bitten off more than they could chew and went running for their lives. They’d probably crossed multiple territories, angering every vampire along the way, and then brought all that trouble right down on Sorin and the rest of the team. If those climbers were lucky, they were alive and still running.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take some time to sweep the nearby area just to make sure they’re not holed up somewhere,” Nemari said.
“We probably should,” Sorin agreed, but he wasn’t happy with the idea.
They didn’t exactly have a clock running against them, but they were pushing hard to reach the door and use the key before any more surprises could pop up. And while a few minutes wouldn’t necessarily hurt, it became a new issue if and when they found the other team.
Sorin could easily picture a group of two or three wounded climbers. Abandoning them would be the same as killing them. Half an hour of searching would turn into two days of escorting them back to safety, then another day of regaining the ground they’d lost.
But if the alternative is killing a couple innocent climbers, there’s not really much choice, is there?
What he wouldn’t do was risk his own team’s life in the search, so they weren’t leaving until he was confident each and every person was recovered enough to defend themselves. That was just a matter of time and anima, though, and after half an hour, they were ready to move again.
It took them twenty minutes to find the other climbers. Surprisingly, there were seven of them who’d barricaded themselves in a room not all that far away from where the vampires had met their collective end. What exactly they thought piling some furniture up would accomplish, Sorin couldn’t say.
All of them were covered with blood, and half of them had visible wounds that they hadn’t been able to staunch with their rudimentary efforts at first aid. Two weren’t even conscious, and Sorin was pretty sure they’d die if no one with actual healing magic helped them.
“What happened?” was all he said as he stood in the door while the climbers scrambled to dodge the pile of dislodged furniture.
“Who—who are you?” one of them asked.
“A climber who just had to deal with seven damn vampires and their entourages at the same time. I can only assume I have you to thank for that?”
A woman who was missing the lower half of her left arm pulled herself to her feet and limped forward. “My name’s Kierenne,” she said. “It’s my fault. I’m to blame.”
“Explain,” Sorin ordered. He stepped into the room to make space for Odric and Vendis to slip by so they could start working.
“My team was working the area. We’ve been here for two weeks. Everything was going fine, but we were running low on supplies, so we stopped pushing forward and started the return trip. We didn’t realize a vampire had spotted us. When we left his territory, he chased after us, then caught up when we ran into another vampire.
“We couldn’t do two groups at once. Lost our healer first. Things fell apart from there. The team broke and ran. We lost two more there. Then we ran into another team who had their own vampire to deal with.”
She trailed off, a haunted look on her face and unshed tears gleaming in her eyes. It wasn’t hard to guess the rest of it, but Sorin waited patiently for her to collect herself so she could tell the story anyway.
“It all went to shit after that. I have no idea what even happened once we started running. My team is just me and one other left alive. He’s one of the unconscious ones your healers are working on. The other team is mostly intact, but they lost their healer, too. Bad luck, right? So we’ve just been running, trying to keep ahead of everything.
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“We hit this dead end and figured that was that. Threw the furniture in front of the door and waited for the inevitable. But then you guys showed up instead of the vampires. I don’t know how you’re all still alive.”
Sorin just grunted and assessed the room. It would be a drain on their resources, but this was probably the best result he could have hoped for. Two partial teams together could help each other get back to the relative safety of the portal hub. Instead of spending days shepherding a single broken team through dangerous terrain, they’d lose an hour or two recovering.
About time we finally caught a break somewhere.
“We’ll get you back on your feet,” Sorin said eventually.
“We lost our loot—”
He cut her off. “We’re not charging you for it.”
Some of the tension went out of Kierenne. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I really thought we were done for, you know?”
“You got lucky, is all.”
“Did we? I guess we’re still alive. But I’m done climbing. I’ve got four families to tell the bad news to, and then I’m officially retired.”
She couldn’t have been more than thirty, maybe not even that. It was hard to get a good read when she was obviously exhausted and covered in blood. There were definitely soulprints reinforcing her stamina in her build. Without them, Sorin doubted she’d still be alive. She certainly wouldn’t have been conscious when his team had arrived.
The sad thing was that retiring at thirty wasn’t all that uncommon. If anything, it was a bit commendable. Depending on when she’d started, she’d probably had a solid ten-year career of slow and cautious climbing, never over-extending, always playing it safe. All it took was one unknown variable to end it all, and today was that day for her.
“Your two teams are alright with partnering up to make it back to the portal hub?” Sorin asked, raising his voice to make sure everyone was paying attention.
“Don’t think we’ve got much choice,” said a heavyset man sitting against the back wall. His eyes were closed, and his head was wrapped in what looked like a torn shirt. Gashes covered his arms and chest. “Appreciate the save, though. Woulda been completely fucked otherwise.”
“I’m sorry,” Kierenne told him.
“Save it. I don’t blame you.”
The heavyset man might not, but Sorin could see that not everyone else shared his opinion on the matter. They’d lost a man, too, and it was technically because of Kierenne’s team leading a vampire into them while they were already engaged in a fight.
“Blame the tower and the vampires if you’re looking for someone to blame,” Sorin told them. “Climbers have to support each other. It’s the only way we survive.”
He turned around and walked back into the hallway where everyone else was waiting for him. Nemari and Yoru peered past him, but Rue had already seen everything there was to see with Blind Sense. She just stood, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
Sorin kept an eye on things, too, of course. While the climbers didn’t seem like much of a threat, sometimes people got stupid ideas into their heads. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that one of them would try to kidnap a healer for their trip back. Sorin hoped that didn’t happen. He’d hate to have to kill more climbers.
“That seems to confirm your theory,” Nemari said.
“Yeah. Nothing malicious this time. Small miracles, I suppose.”
“I’ll admit I’m a bit surprised by your decisions,” Yoru told him. “I had thought you to be a somewhat colder man than this.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“On the contrary, I’m happy to see you still have some empathy for other climbers. God knows we’ve given you precious little reason to think highly of us.”
Sorin hadn’t kept track of the number of men and women he’d killed since coming to the red tower. There was that first group he’d run into back on day one. Then there were half a dozen teams of Black Hellions to add to the pile. That bounty hunter marked another kill. He was responsible for half of Nemari’s family being dead, too.
That was the thing about being weak. Power meant options. Options meant not having to kill anyone who became a problem. Being weak left him with only one solution, and however much some of them had deserved it, Sorin could at least say he hadn’t enjoyed being the one to do the deed.
“It’s nice to get a win every now and then, even if it’s just a handful of people who wouldn’t be here without our intervention.”
All told, it took close to two hours before the two climbing teams were ready to start moving. Sorin sketched out a rough map of the route they’d taken, which, if the climbers followed it, would get them within a few miles of the portal hub. That assumed nothing had changed, but it’d been a fairly short time frame. As long as they were quick, they should be able to follow the trail back with minimal monster encounters.
The goodbyes were said. The climbers left. And Sorin’s team turned their eyes back south. There’d be more vampires to kill as they finished crossing Black Walls, and then they had to pass through Blood Thorn Garden.
“Another day, maybe two,” Sorin muttered.
Nemari looked over. “What’s that?”
“Trying to figure out how long it’ll take us to get to the door. I can risk a resupply if we run low, but I’d rather not.”
“I think we’ve got more than enough to last a few days.”
Sorin nodded. “Sure. But how long will we be in the lion’s den?”
“Right, I see your point.”
“So, no more delays,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got a bad feeling that the longer we stay out here, the worse it’ll be for us.”
* * *
Samael woke to the sound of pounding on his door. Groaning softly, he forced himself upright. Every move made his soulspace twinge in pain, and even as he dragged himself out of bed, all he could think of was murdering whoever it was that had woken him up.
The door swung open, silent on its oiled hinges, to reveal his chief of staff. He was holding a piece of paper in one hand and had a look of absolute glee lighting up his face. It made Samael want to murder him even harder.
“What.”
Urd didn’t flinch at the word. He’d worked under Samael for too long to show any trace of fear.
“You’re going to like this one. One of our spies in the Telpike estate just reported in.”
Something about Sorin, then. That man is a massive headache.
Samael’s expression made it clear he was in no mood to play games. In what was perhaps the wisest move Urd had ever made in his entire life, he schooled his expression and silently handed over the slip of paper. Samael’s eyes flicked down to it and skimmed across the message, then froze and tracked back to reread it fully.
“And this is confirmed?” he asked.
“Saw it with his own eyes,” Urd said, some smugness returning to his tone.
“Prepare my gear,” Samael said.
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