Chapter Twelve

Every time he made a stride, was ready to up the pace, something got in the way. Daphne’s injury, the first group of assassins, who he still hadn’t found the source of, and now this. As Will reunited with his party and allowed Brunjar to run through what had happened in his absence, he had new respect for the leading lights of the first timeline. They’d built and held together organisations without the benefit of his knowledge and experience, while still actively dealing with far greater issues of Earth politics and Tower conflict. He’d tried to pass as much responsibility down the chain to people who were more capable than him in this area, but the power disparity and the fact he was still taking a heavy hand in guiding them disrupted that strategy.

“Obviously, we haven’t been able to prove anything, but from what you’ve told me about their methods, it seems like the invaders may be a move from the FCA. They’ve started offering enough pay and benefits to their Climbers that their numbers are swelling. With that, the idea that a few of these new recruits have been funnelled into smaller puppet Clans doesn’t seem too unlikely.”

Will had to agree with Brunjar on that. In the first timeline, Luke and Jeremy hadn’t been the only pair to decide that attacking the Denizens trying to bully and coerce them into opening the way to the next Floor was a good idea. From the maps that his Clan were slowly constructing of Floor 5, though, Will could see that the reports of Climber/Denizen conflict seemed to be spread somewhat randomly, but without any intersection with FCA or Towerfall territory.

“You sure you can’t just assassinate the asshole in charge of them?”

Daphne’s words, though delivered in a light-hearted tone, cut to the heart of the matter. He’d had this conversation with his party more than once. Jeremy Shiner never entered the Tower, and Luke was constantly surrounded by a large group of hired mercenaries. Even if he was willing to bear the moral and legal consequences of killing them, the practicality just wasn’t there.

Irikaz spoke up, having sat quietly for the majority of their meeting. He threw an arm upwards, drawing attention to him, and then spoke in words that were quiet, but clear and forceful.

“I have received requests for aid from 6 Villages. When you arrived on this Floor, and we made our deals, you promised that you would prevent your people from hurting mine. Something must be done.”

Will had to agree, though he could have done without the implied criticism. He wasn’t actually sure how the Denizens interacted with each other, and was honestly surprised that Irikaz seemed so upset about villages far from his own being exploited. On later Floors, there’d be groups of Denizens who actually warred, after all.

“You’re completely right Irikaz, and I apologise that we have not been able to stop this before now. I hold no authority over the humans who are attacking the other villages, but that is not an excuse to let them run free.”

Nods from around the table, with varying degrees of vehemence. Will turned to the members of his Clan, all stronger and more well-equipped than when he had left them, and started laying out the plan.

“Brunjar, contact Colby and Julian. Their claimed villages are closer to the ones being attacked than ours, and I think we’ll probably need their support if we’re going to fight other Climbers. We don’t want to look like the aggressors.”

“I’ve already spoken with Colby, and EuroClimb sent a representative who I know has some means of contacting his bosses, so I can go through him to Julian and the others. Here.”

He punctuated the last word by standing from his seat and passing over a wedge of papers from a pouch at his waist. Will took them and started flipping through. Reports from scouts and other Climbers about the villages under siege and the forces involved. It wasn’t great reading.

“Okay. Dane, we’re going to need to plan this out. I want to hit all 6 at the same time, prevent them having a chance to flee or bunker down. I’m sure Colby and Julian will commit some people as well, but you have a better idea of our capacity than me.”

The planning ran long into the night, and then came around into the next morning. Once Colby and Julian arrived, along with a small retinue of their most senior followers, Will had found himself edged steadily out of the conversation to an advisory role. Dane and Colby were both former military, and Julian was technically still enlisted with the Swedish army, though on indefinite leave to head up EuroClimb. Their understanding of force composition and tactics went beyond his own by a significant margin, and so he found himself just nodding along as they made plans.

“Hey, you okay?”

Metrodora’s words were softly spoken, joined by her good arm slipping around his shoulder, and Will allowed himself to relax into her.

“So much to do, and more keeps popping up. I still need to visit Blanik, and we’ve still got to Clear 4 more Floors to reach 10. Not to mention the chaos that will almost definitely erupt once the Ascended Clan Tokens are in play.”

Part of him felt somewhat petulant, making the complaint. He’d known that things like this would happen when he decided to lead a Clan. He could have gone the solo route, letting other people piece together a working society in the Tower while he blazed the trail towards Floor 50. Looking at his Sheet, seeing the War Enhancer Class and recalling his time with Galliar, he shook the thought off.

“You’re not the priority. You’re not the hero, or the legend, or the one who gets the credit. That’s not what being a War Enhancer is about. You’re support. Support from the front, support that can handle himself, sure, but support. You may not be wearing the armour or wielding the shield, but I can see that you’ve tanked before.”

Will nodded, surprised that Galliar had picked that out. He’d been fairly good at working through the muscle memory of a shield, at moving from taking hits to dishing them out, but apparently a veteran could still see his former training shining through.

“War Enhancer is just like that, except you can do more than take a hit for someone. You can build them up to take the hit for themselves, and to deliver one back with 10x the power. Stop moping about how you didn’t get to fight much, stop being jealous of the fact that these – fake, Tower-made clone – soldiers are celebrating each other and not you. If you want to be a War Enhancer, you need to be comfortable putting yourself second.”

“I found the Bloodline, you know?”

At that, his head snapped round to face Met. Her goal, on Floor 6, had been looking for the location of the Martial Clan Tournament Hidden Event. It offered 5 Bloodlines as rewards, all extremely powerful. All 5 had been held by A and S Rankers in the first timeline, most famously Frost Sentinel Boris’ Inheritance of the Frostsoul Clan.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You found the pagoda?”

Metrodora gave him a broad grin as she nodded her head.

“Yeah, your directions were shit, but I found it eventually. Unless there’s another Asian-style pagoda on the Floor I didn’t know about?”

She fished a piece of paper out of her Spatial Bag and handed it over. Thanks to one of the Daneguard, a good number of Towerfall’s senior members and scouts had been given basic mapping lessons. Will scanned the drawing, mentally projecting his memories of the Floor onto the quickly scribbled lines to try and isolate the journey.

Finding the location of the Hidden Event was a huge coup, and Will fought the urge to whoop with joy. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to monopolise all 5 Bloodlines for Towerfall or offer one or two to secure stronger ties with the other Clans, but having the option alone made a huge difference. Assuming things didn’t deviate too much from the first timeline, there were still years to go till Kaito Seba, the Fireblood Monk, would stumble upon the upgrade which earned him his name.

“Hmm. Actually…”

Met nudged him with her pseudopod, reminding him that there were others in the room, and he quickly clarified.

“I was just wondering if it was worth putting out an alert on a man I know of. He was fairly powerful in the first timeline, but went missing not too long after he broke onto the scene. Not sure about his morals or his goals, though.”

They discussed small things for a while longer, Met helping him to feel better about trusting his subordinates and allies to handle things. Eventually, the people who didn’t have the near-immunity to sleep he did made their exit, and he was once again left with just the hardcore of his supporters.

“Battle plan is ready. Julian’s spoken to his bosses, and they’ve spoken to the Americans. We’re aiming to capture rather than kill, but official policy is that the Tower is out of law enforcement jurisdiction.”

Will nodded gratefully to Dane. He’d hoped he wouldn’t need to enforce his rules so overtly this early, but looking over their preparations, he felt confident about the chances of success.

“This is crucial. It will tell the undecideds that we’re not just posturing, and it’ll tell the FCA or whoever is funding these groups that they can’t get away with it.”

Everyone agreed heartily, and Irikaz once again thanked Will for being willing to go to bat for the Denizens. The assault was set for three days time, and the meeting split apart finally.

----page break----

Arriving back on Earth was a strange feeling. He didn’t have long before he had to go back to the Tower for the assault, but the few days of recruitment and preparation gave Will just enough of a window to visit Blanik as he’d planned. Reappearing in his apartment, he shifted his gear into his Spatial Ring and threw on a change of clothes.

Moving over to his laptop, he opened it up and navigated to the email account he’d set up for Pioneer.

1000+ New Messages

“Ah.”

One of Brunjar’s guys had been using the account, keeping him appraised of anything important and making sure the Towerfall reports on the Floors and things got released online at the same time as they started being disseminated in the Tower. Still, it looked like he might need to up the number of people handling it, since the inbox was stuffed to bursting.

A quick scan showed that most were irrelevant. Questions from all sorts of random people, interview requests from media outlets, communication from representatives of groups he’d already met with in-Tower. A few caught his eye, and he marked them to look over later, before he remembered why he was on Earth to begin with.

There. Just a couple down from the top, was the email he was looking for. Confirmation from Julian that he’d arrived on Earth and was ready to send a unit for pickup. He quickly sent one back with his address, and then went to Spiresidechats to review the latests posts while he waited.

A grin split his face after a few posts, seeing the familiar community fully engaged in supporting each other and posting advice. Recommending the site as a place for Climbers to share information had clearly worked, since it was far more active than it had been first time round. Whoever Brunjar had using the account was very active, and Will flicked through the threads that Pioneer had commented on making sure his reputation wasn’t being misused.

An hour passed without him even realising, and he closed the thread he’d been reading when his door was knocked with the heavy blows of a soldier. The commenters had been debating the FCA’s loot sharing rules, and he’d been pleased to see that the consensus was it was exploitative and not worth the benefits.

“Mr Sutton?”

He moved over to the door and opened it, greeting the three suited men with a careful nod.

“We’re with PETEF. Here.”

The leader, a broad and shaven headed black man with a hint of a German accent, handed over a mobile phone with a call in progress to Will. He took it, and put the phone to his ear.

“Pioneer?”

It was Julian, as expected, and Will relaxed slightly. The odds of the men being anything but his arranged transport weren’t high, but they weren’t zero either. A few quick words back and forth, and he passed the phone back to the soldier.

As they walked to the men’s car, and then drove to the airstrip for Will’s plane, Julian’s soldiers introduced themselves. Will tried to fix their names in mind, but since they were Earth-based support forces, he probably wouldn’t remember them for too much longer. They arrived at the small plane, and he suppressed a shiver of discomfort. The strange deference of people to his Pioneer identity in-Tower was one thing, but part of the reason he’d barely visited Earth since going public had been because the treatment he got felt weird.

With Blanik being based in his home of Poland, the flight from London wasn’t too far at all, and he’d barely managed to snatch a couple of hours checking the internet to catch up with what he’d missed. Still, as he stepped off the plane, he tucked a sheet of paper into his pocket with a few useful names to pass on to Brunjar. Magician Kim, Skystepper Eshwei and Menagerie were all already active in the budding celebrity Climber movement, and with the exception of Eshwei (who had yet to earn her first-timeline nickname and the Item that it referred to) they could be potentially useful allies as long as they didn’t form the ill-advised Clan Floor 1000. Since he wasn’t just looking to make Towerfall an Ascended Clan, but also to ensure the other 9 were of greater utility than they had been before, an early intervention might be a useful tool.

Back into a car with his three shadows, he did spare a brief wish for the presence of Julian or one of the original Climbers he’d met all the way back on the first Floor. Though he hadn’t yet told them the truth of his origins, and didn’t actually plan to any time soon, they’d been crucial allies in the early days of Towerfall and especially keeping Earth governments from taking a more aggressive stance towards Will and his group. Despite that, both he and they were far too busy to have spent much time catching up or talking since their first meeting and the night at the campfire.

Still, he engaged in some polite small-talk with the three escorting soldiers, and used their words to help build his mental image of where Earth society was regarding the Tower. He’d get a better grasp from Blanik, but it was always useful to get the data from wherever he could. The drive was almost as long as the flight, without even the benefit of wi-fi to check his laptop, but they eventually pulled in to the car park of a small nondescript building on the outskirts of Krakow.

Thankfully, Julian had instructed his men not to follow Will inside, saving him the awkward job of asking for privacy. He walked up to the building’s door and gave a knock, not even having to wait seconds before it was pulled open by a grinning Blanik. The teen looked good, better than he ever had in the Tower. He seemed to have grown an inch or two, his muscles were toned and defined, and the perpetual worry that creased his features had smoothed significantly.

Will opened his mouth to speak, but before the words could arrive, Blanik threw out his arms and pulled him into a crushing hug.