Stormblade 4 C52: The Black Tower (3)

52 - The Black Tower (3)

My next two skills—Thunderbolt Forms and Cyclone Forms—hit A-10 as Tanat and I fought our way across the Solo Portal’s fourth floor.

When Thunderbolt Forms hit, the pressure didn’t go away. It hung around me, pushing on my skin and core in equal measure and refusing to yield. I knew exactly what that meant.

I’d pushed enough skills right to the cusp that I could easily start the S-Rank push.

But as I sat down to begin, Tanat’s hand landed on my shoulder again. It was shocking, but even through her glove and my pauldron, I could feel her light touch.

“Wait. We must talk, and we should move while we do so. You have not told me your method yet, Kade Noelstra. I may have advice for you, though, even so,” she said quietly. “You have learned many Laws on your journey, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So, you believe you know your skills and your core intimately, correct?”

I nodded slowly as we turned the corner. A pair of S-Ranked suits of armor met us, shields and swords glowing with dozens of Scripts and magic surging around them. Tanat took the one on the left, and I fought the one on the right. The fight took almost two minutes; we’d gotten good at killing armor, but these ones were tougher than anything I’d seen before. “I think so, yes,” I said when the two suits finally fell apart, cuts and scorch marks covering the metal.

“Do you understand your relationship with your core, though? The part of you that it is? I am not speaking of its location in your physical body. It is not a heart or lungs. I mean, how the core within relates to the person inhabiting your body.”

I blinked. “I think so. I don’t like bullies, and I keep my promises.”

“And how does that relate to the storm you hold inside, Kade Noelstra?” Before I could answer, she kept talking. If you had grown up with the Soaring Sabers, you would understand this. Before I ever picked up a sword in anger, I understood every aspect of who I was and who I strived to be. Months in thought, meditating.”

“You’d like my sister,” I said.

A trap went off, and we dodged separate ways as the floor filled with a whirlwind of clouds and lightning. A lightbearer attacked me, beams of the same sickly yellow-white lantern light surging out and draining my energy even as a suit of armor dug in between the caster and me. Storm Dance covered the distance, and Thunderblade, after a quick stance shift, shredded the robed woman’s body and left her bleeding on the floor, lantern broken. The armor attacked, but I was ready for that, too. Rain-Slicked Blade punched through its portal metal plating.

From there, it was just a matter of wearing it down. I pushed down a hallway, turned right, and rejoined Tanat.

“I believe I might like your sister, yes. Is she meditative?”

“Only because she has to be.”

“Does she know herself?”

“Not as well as she thinks she does.”

Tanat laughed. “She sounds like you, Kade Noelstra. I believe you require more time before your push to S-Rank.”

“I don’t have more time. I need this portal dead, and I need S-Rank. I have promises to keep!”

“Both of those tasks will be accomplished before the two of us depart, and before the day is out. You frighten me, Kade Noelstra. The speed at which you do things is almost nonsensical. I would have allowed myself five more years to finish the Black Tower. A Lonely Key is meant to be a challenge, and yet, we walk through it like nothing.”

I stared at Tanat. “Five more years for this?”

“I have taken wounds. Without proper healing, those wounds can linger as tightness and stiffness, preventing me from reaching my full potential in later years. Thus, the Soaring Saber sect takes its time, teaching patience and self-understanding. You lack the first, and may also lack the second. I am the master of my body and mind in a way that you, for all your talent and brilliance, are not.

“I say this not to insult you, but so you understand the gulf in philosophy between us, and to ask you to wait before you attempt to push to S-Rank. One more floor. Focus on who you believe yourself to be and on your relationship with your core as we fight the Black Tower’s last boss. Then, you may be ready to push to S-Rank.”

There was no response to that—none that’d make me look good or ‘win’ the conversation, at least—so instead, I fell silent, and we continued to fight.

I’d wait. And I’d try to understand myself and my core better than I did. But I’d seethe the whole time I did it.

◄▼►

Kaloran, Lord of the Black Tower: S-Rank Paragon

The boss’s room looked like a cross between a horror movie—the kind where a mad scientist resurrects sewn-together corpses—and Queen Mother Yalerax’s throne room. The robed and metal-clad figure’s throne sat on a raised dias easily fifteen feet above the rest of the room, and lightning poured into his armor from a half-dozen portal-metal coils arrayed around him. Scripts lit up in yellow-white electricity across his pauldrons and breastplate. A hand-wide sword sat across his lap, and a book hung from his belt.

All around the edge of the room, more lightning generators shot arcing electricity into suits of armor mounted on wooden frames. The room reeked of ozone and smoldering wood, and behind each frame sat a cage with a portal monster trapped inside.

I’d seen portal monsters caged and trapped by the Dark Citadel worlds before—in Roswell, during the convoy’s trip to Carlsbad. They’d been experiments, then.

They were still experiments now.

But instead of being furious, I focused on what I had to accomplish.

Kaloran needed to die. He was a Paragon, and he possessed a Paragon core. There was a chance that this core would be the tool I needed to help Ellen reforge hers. I’d made a promise, and this was a chance to keep it. But Tanat needed this core, too. Could I fight her for it, or would it be possible to find another solution?

I glanced her way, and she looked away quickly.

Even if he’d just been a regular portal boss, though…even then, he’d still have had to die. I needed the power, and I needed it immediately. The rest of the Carlsbad Portal team was counting on me, unless they’d pushed to the portal boss in my absence. The best thing I could do was come back quickly, at S-Rank.

But setting aside what I owed to Ellen, and to Sarah, Nathan, and the others, I’d still be here, fighting this boss. It felt right.

And as we began our fight and the battle trance took me, I held that thought in my mind.

I opened with Windwalk as Kaloran stood from his throne and brought his sword up in a one-handed grip. The other flipped his Script book open.

“No, I believe not,” Tanat said. She dashed across the room, angling not toward Kaloran, but toward the first of the suits of armor even as a Script-paper rocketed toward it. “Kade, the boss. I will handle the armor.”

I was already casting.

Mana: 301/630

Darkness. Brendan’s Stormfire Lance. A Lightning Chain—this one carrying Cloudburst. I didn’t know for sure if Kaloran was a true caster, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way. The chain pulled me in right behind the Stormfire Lance. Nimbus Edge met the boss’s blade with a thundering crash. We danced out of the Darkness, swords whipping toward each other.

I focused on the feeling, even as my vision focused on the Paragon’s weapon. It felt right. A blow came in, and I parried it. Another. I ducked, then shifted stances. Thunderbolt Forms. Rain-Slicked Blade. A thin, almost nonexistent gap in Kaloran’s armor—just enough. A smile crept across my face.

The boss’s sword hammered down; the Stormsteel pauldron took the blow, and I rolled with it, letting it smash me into the brick floor rather than trying to fight it. An S-Rank boss was too strong to resist, and I wasn’t a tank.

Swords flashed. Lightning surged. The air grew thick with static.

And as we fought, my mind whirled. This all felt right. It felt like what I had to be doing—and not just because I owed Ellen or Sarah, or even Jeff or Jessie. Not even because I’d told Dad I’d make him proud.

No.

This was deeper than any of that.

The Laws of the Stormsteel Path came to mind, unbidden. The multiple Laws of the Stormsteel. Thunderhead. Sirocco and Clouded Eye. The core of the build. Aggression and deception, attack and defense, chaos and control. Patience.

Our swords met again. My feet backed up the dias, toward Kalderon’s throne. I wasn’t fighting to win. My mind whirled too fast for that.

In the distance, at the gray blur at the edge of my vision, Tanat fought against two suits of Script-powered armor. The portal monsters behind the empty cages lay dead, and the fight reframed itself.

Every one of those portal monsters would gladly fight me. They all had the same thought—the same overwhelming, overriding need to kill me, kill Tanat, and then break free from this portal and kill in whatever world they arrived in. They were all my enemies. All of them.

But at the same time…at the same time, I couldn’t help but think back to the small group of humans we’d pulled from that portal in Roswell.

They’d been victims.

And so were these monsters, in a way. Another died, and a third suit of armor rose to join the battle. They were victims of Kaleron, and the Lord of the Black Tower was their bully.

Was it that simple? Had I always understood what drove me to battle? And was that truly the crux of my relationship with the Stormsteel Path? I dove back into battle, sword flashing as I pressed Kaleron away from the throne. I pushed myself to my limits, and to the limits of my A-Rank skills. The pressure grew around me as Cyclone Forms hit A-10, and I wiped blood from my face.

The boss had gotten a hold of me. Both of us were worse for wear after that exchange; his robe hung in tatters from his shoulder, and his armor had four holes in it, but his Health had fixed the wounds below the damage. I bled from a half-dozen cuts. None were deep enough to be dangerous, though—and I was used to pain.

But even as we kept fighting, sword and spell and Script flying like hail in the wind, I continued digging into my core. The boss in front of me wasn’t the victory condition. Not really. I could kill him any time—I felt it in my heart. But until I understood why I felt that, I couldn’t end the fight.

A suit of Script-powered, lightning-infused armor attacked from behind, and I dropped into Mistwalk Forms. I vanished, using a Lightning Charge to reposition with Storm Dance and a Wind Charge to accelerate back toward Kaleron with Windwalk. Even as I reengaged, Tanat’s rapier slammed through the offending suit of armor. “Try to be quick, Kade Noelstra,” she said, voice calm. The hawk-like, predatory expression on her face betrayed her, though; she was having fun.

It wasn’t just that Kaleron was a bully.

If that was all it was, understanding why I cared about the fight would have been easy, and that would have given me an insight into my core. But it felt like a half-truth. Like something I could begin to build a Law off of, but that wouldn’t allow me to finish it. Not enough.

The boss rained Scripts down on the throne room.

I countered the sudden rush of armor with Stormbreak. Lightning blossomed around everything, with the exception of Tanat. Thunder crashed as the room lit up in blue-white light that drowned out both the torches and the yellow-white lightning generators Kaleron had been using. I pushed through the pain coursing through my body and mind, then followed the blow up with a double Cutting Storm. Armor shredded, and every suit looked like it had been through hell.

“Tanat, you’ve got those, right?” I asked.

She nodded, and I turned my attention back to Kaleron. Our swords met again, and lightning surged across the room.

I wouldn’t stop until I understood myself. Until I understood the truth about my journey along the Stormsteel Path.

I couldn’t.

◄▼►

When Kaleron finally died, it wasn’t by my hand.

Tanat simply grew bored. She’d defeated the wounded suits of armor, and with the two of us, the boss fell quickly. I even backed off, hoping to stretch the fight—and my understanding of myself—out just a few moments longer. But the moment I did, the kernel of knowledge that I was so close to felt farther than it had since I’d first crossed blades with Kaleron. That, at least, gave me one piece of information.

I, just like the storm in my core, needed to act.

When the Paragon died, sure enough, a shadowy core appeared. Small sparks of lightning crackled just below its surface; it was perfect for Ellen. I sighed in relief and reached for it, but before I could touch it, Tanat’s sword snapped out and tapped my fingertips.

“I cannot allow you to take the Lonely Key’s heart, Kade.” She looked almost sad about it. “This is the proof I require to enter the inner school of my sect, and the tool I need to reach S-Rank. If you were to take it from me, I would fail in my task. Surely you understand.”

Anger flooded me, but I pushed it down. Another fight with Tanat—this time with stakes—could easily end with one or both of us dead. And she’d earned it through literal years of slow, methodical effort. I could find another way for Ellen.

I pulled my hand back. “Take it, then. But tell me something. I still don’t understand. I’m still not ready. What now?”

Tanat smiled as she pocketed the core and sheathed her sword. “Kade Noelstra, if you still do not understand yourself and your core, then there is only one thing left to do. Press forward. Is that not what you do?”

I nodded slowly. Then I dropped into a meditative pose.

“I will not be here when you return, Kade. It was…good…to fight by your side. If you should find your way to the Soaring Saber’s portal world, know that the sect would welcome your knowledge with open minds and open arms.”

“Thanks, Tanat,” I said. “And good luck.”

Then I closed my eyes. I didn’t know myself—not perfectly, at least—but I did know the parts of me that pushed me to fight.

That would have to be enough to push to S-Rank.