Stormblade 4 C50: The Black Tower (1)

50 - The Black Tower (1)

As I woke up to cold bricks and flickering torches, my mind examined my body.

I’d taken more of a beating than I’d thought.

There was the scalp wound. Those bled like nothing else, but it wasn’t my biggest concern. What was more shocking—and more worrying—was the sheer number of cuts covering my arms and shoulders. I hadn’t realized it, because the Stormsteel armor had done its job as best it could, but Quellat’s rapier behaved somewhat like Rain-Slicked Blade. It hadn’t punched through completely, but it had done enough.

More interestingly, I was shirtless, and bandages covered the worst of the half-healed wounds—including two that had slammed through my boots and sliced my calves to the bone. My limited self-healing was slowly putting everything together, all at once; I redirected it to the calf injuries, ignoring the rest.

If it wasn’t bleeding, it could wait, but I needed to be able to move. The last thing I’d expected in the Solo portal was to run into a friendly face—and I still wasn’t sure I had.

I rolled over, groaning as my stiff muscles stretched.

Tanat: A-Rank

She squatted next to a glowing crystal on the ground; the greenish-yellow light cast a long shadow across the bottom of the stairwell that meshed awkwardly with the blue-white portal I’d entered through. She was fully armored, and her lightning sword rested in her lap—unsheathed. No helmet, though. Her eyes were black—no whites, no colored irises, only darkness. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was a monster.

Still, she hadn’t attacked me. At least, not this time.

“Thank you for the assist,” I said.

She said something back, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. I closed my eyes, then pushed myself to a sitting position; as I did, her hand tightened around her sword’s grip.

If Jessie was here, she’d probably be figuring out how to translate Tanat’s language. As for me? I didn’t care. The swordswoman wasn’t on the offensive. She was tense, though. I couldn’t blame her for that. Sure, I’d saved her life the last time I’d been here, but that didn’t mean I was an ally—just like her dressing my wounds didn’t make us friends.

“I’m not interested in fighting you,” I tried. “I’m trying to clear this portal.”

More of the language I didn’t know. It came in a flood, long strings of words. I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but I need to clear this portal. I’ve got people counting on me back where I came from, and I can’t afford to have you floating around behind me, ready to stab me in the back. Can I trust you?”

Tanat’s brow wrinkled. I groaned. This language barrier was going to be a problem.

“Are you going to kill me?” I mimed stabbing myself in the back, then pointed at her.

She just stared. One eyebrow raised, then lowered, and after a moment, she shook her head and slid her helmet over her head, covering her pitch-black, featureless eyes. Her lips parted in a smile; I recognized it. It was the same smile Councilwoman Harriet Myers sometimes wore—the smile of a predator.

But when she offered me her leather-gloved hand, I took it and let her pull me to my feet. The portal needed clearing. It had to be done quickly.

And to do that, I needed allies.

◄▼►

It took a few minutes to get packed up.

I didn’t have much, but Tanat was clearly here for the long haul. The moment I was standing, she rolled up a sleeping pad I hadn’t noticed that she’d been sitting on, tucked it into a leather bag, and tapped the glowing crystal until it flickered into darkness, then dropped it in behind the pad. Then she slowly and painstakingly rearranged a folding bag that reminded me a little of a shaving kit, but filled with scalpels, tongs, thread, and bandages, making sure that every item was in exactly the right spot before buckling it shut and setting it atop the collection of stuff in her bag.

Then, to my surprise, she left it behind and started walking.

I fell in next to her. My wounds ached, but…

User: Kade Noelstra
Reforged Core, A-Rank
Stamina: 145/500, Mana: 497/630

Skills: 
1. Stormsteel Core (A-09, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)
2. Thunderbolt Forms (A-08, Altered, Merged)
3. Mistwalk Forms (A-07 to A-09, Altered, Merged)
4. Cyclone Forms (A-06 to A-07, Altered, Merged)
5. Stormlight Bond (B-10, Altered, Merged)
6. Shadowstorm Battery (C-10, Altered, Merged, Dual)
7. Stormbreak (B-02 to B-04, Unique)

I had gained a little power from our retreat up the Carlsbad portal and my delaying fight against Quellat. I was getting close. And even better for the immediate term, I’d managed to gain a small pool of Stamina against the pain. It wasn’t a ton, but combined with my nearly full Mana, I was approaching functional.

As we walked, I cleared my throat. “You can’t understand me, but I’ve got three goals here. I’ve got to hit S-Rank in three skills. If I can do that, I’ll be ready to try pushing to S-Rank. My patron laid out the path for me, but I’m not exactly sure how it’ll work in practice. So, that’s the first bit.”

Tanat nodded seriously, but didn’t say anything. I honestly had no idea whether she was even listening.

“After that, I’m trying to clear the rest of the portal. I need every scrap of power I can get, but it has to happen as fast as possible. I’ve already wasted too much time down and out. I need to get back to…to where I came from.”

A string of words. One or two of them almost sounded like English, but not quite. We reached the second floor and kept climbing, aiming for the third.

“And finally, I’ve got an enemy outside. I need to outmaneuver him—or, if I’m S-Rank when I leave here, overpower him. But either way, Quellat has to die.”

Just having spoken those goals gave me something to focus on. I could do well with goals. That’s how I’d survived getting Stormbreak as my go-to skill, and it was how I’d built the build I had. The focus wasn’t quite the same as the battle trance—there wasn’t anything to fight yet, and it felt more cerebral and less feral—but as we climbed to the third floor and started heading toward the uncleared part of the tower, I felt centered. Calm. Ready for a fight.

I’d been clearing the third floor for a while now. This was going to be different, though. This time, there’d be no retreat.

Only victory.

◄▼►

Tanat and I stepped carefully through a half-dozen traps—lightning-filled corridors, pits that opened from nothing, and Scripts that summoned whirlwinds. They’d all reset; the Solo Portal didn’t ever send monsters into the cleared areas, but it was impossible to disarm most of the traps permanently. The dark brick hallways were only broken up by an occasional room whose outer wall was a grid of portal metal and electricity. The sheer power was impressive, even to me. Nothing like the God of Thunder, and even I was getting close to being able to rival it in short bursts, but still—it was impressive.

We found our first monsters two rooms from where I’d left off last time—when I’d found a badly wounded Tanat and chosen to save her life. There were three of them. Two were suits of dark armor with ruby eyes that glowed in the lightning-lit room and massive axes they wielded one-handed. The third was a woman whose bony limbs made Tanat’s look fat. She wore nothing but bandages across her entire body, and every scrap of bandage was covered in Scripts and Bindings. And, in one hand, she carried a hooded lantern.

Black Cell Lightbearer: S-Rank

Dark Citadel Siegebreaker: A-Rank

As the two knights closed the gap between us, axes raised, I waved Nimbus Edge at them and pointed at the Lightbearer, then at Tanat. “You want her?”

She nodded, the familiar, predatorial grin flashing across her face.

Then we moved, and the world shrank.

It was just me, two axes, and two sets of armor. In the distance, Tanat sprinted across the hallway, dodging a blast of lightning as the floor erupted around her. Then she was gone, and I was all-in on my own fight.

An axe crashed down on me, its six-foot haft and heavy blade ripping through the air. I side-stepped, dropping into Mistwalk stance. The other axe came in from the side at head-height. The parry sent a surge of numbness through my hand, but the blade missed its target. When I recovered, I was flanked. The first knight closed in. It choked up on the axe haft and swung it in a short, chopping motion. I blocked it, then Mistformed the other knight’s more aggressive, powerful strike.

My feet found stable footing as I reformed, and I slipped backward as even more blows rained in. After the insanity of the last few hours—the assault on the Carlsbad Portal, the Steam Hulk, and then Deborah and Quellat—two A-Rank monsters was almost pedestrian. I shifted into Thunderbolt Forms, letting my off-hand wrap around Nimbus Edge’s hilt, and paused.

The two suits of armor rounded on me, spreading out to flank.

I picked one. My feet pushed off the brick floor. Lightning erupted from the ceiling, but I ignored it; it wouldn’t hit me. Nimbus Edge feinted left. The massive axe spun to intercept, but I pulled the thrust, then dropped into a lunge aimed at the right side of the monster’s breastplate. Rain-Slicked Blade. It sank in, the monster dropped to its knee, and I put the sword straight through the slit in its helmet.

One down.

The other A-Ranked armor swung its axe in a sweeping arc. I ducked in, past the blade, and let the haft bounce off my pauldron. It clipped my head, ringing it, but I kept my footing—and my focus. Thunderblade. Lightning afterimages filled the air as I stabbed, over and over.

It wasn’t enough, but I didn’t need it to be, either. As the armor recovered, I kept up the pressure. My sword cut through air, metal, and Scripts. If my enemy could bleed, blood would have been pouring from dozens of wounds. The Siegebreaker choked up on its axe, unable to get distance; I was too fast. Too aggressive. I’d grown even since my last time here.

And then, as the monster started to retreat, I froze in place and shifted stances again. Cyclone Forms. I had plenty of Mana, but Stamina was a precious resource. Lightning formed in my off-hand. Brendan’s Stormfire Lance. It crackled as I braced myself. The knight shifted, dropping into a charge, and the Stormfire Lance punched through its breastplate. Two down. I spun to see how Tanat was handling the Lightbearer.

She stood over the woman’s half-naked, bleeding corpse, her own sword crackling with energy until she sheathed it, then smiled at me.

I grinned back, and we kept moving.

◄▼►

The Solo Portal was many things.

Challenging. Lethal. Confusing and mazelike. Intimidating, even for me.

But it had one massive weakness.

It was all but designed to be a challenge for a single attacker. I’d been working on it for days, and Tanat…well, I had no idea how long Tanat had been here, but there was a reason the streets outside were empty, and it wasn’t because of me. She’d put in her time, too—probably more than I had. But neither of us had made even close to reasonable progress by ourselves. The number of enemies and traps worked against a soloist.

We weren’t soloists, though. Not anymore.

I could fight defensively for a while, even against three or four A-Rank monsters, and Tanat could do the same. That let whoever the monsters didn’t gang up on focus down a single threat. In that first fight, it had been the Lightbearer—whose combat style I still didn’t know, even after three more encounters with them. Tanat was very good at killing them.

And even better, Tanat’s fighting style was so similar to the Stormsteel Path that it was a wonder she wasn’t one of the God of Thunder’s pupils herself. We meshed perfectly; I’d never experienced that kind of synergy in a portal. Not with Jeff. Not with Ellen.

With no one.

It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t even a massacre.

The third floor of the Solo Portal became a dance. We cut through groups of enemies like they weren’t even there. Tanat and I pointed out traps wordlessly, with gestures of our free hands, and dodged blasts of lightning so strong they left my hair on end for minutes after they passed. What had been an almost unbreakable wall that the two of us could do nothing but lay siege to by ourselves became tissue-thin, to be ripped through with almost casual motions.

And even as the two of us danced through the Solo Portal, I couldn’t help but notice something. It was something blatantly obvious to me. Tanat wasn’t putting everything she had into these fights. She had for the first couple, but ever since then, she’d been holding back—a lot.

I picked it up for the first time as we ripped through a similar group of enemies to that first batch. While I took care of the two axe-wielding Siegebreakers, Tanat dove for the Lightbearer. But this time, instead of oppressing her and killing her quickly, Tanat was still battling when I finished my two. I joined her, and together, we finished off the Lightbearer.

Tanat wasn’t worn out. She wasn’t out of breath. In fact, she had the nerve to smile again, and when I caught her eye, I knew. I knew exactly what she was doing.

She was holding back.

And from that point on, so was I.

But even so, the A and S-Ranked monsters of the Solo Portal kept dying, and the two of us kept moving. And, as we did, my skills slowly, painstakingly pushed their way toward A-10. The moment I had three of them there and a second to breathe, I was going to push to S-Rank. With Tanat’s possible betrayal, and at least one more floor after this one, I was going to need the firepower.