Ch 183 – Corroborating a Memory
As Deacon stepped off the teleporter pad, the wall in front of him shifted automatically, granting him entrance into the lounge and allowing him to see his uncle. Without a word needing to be exchanged, Deacon immediately knew that his uncle sensed something was wrong.
He looked as though he had aged decades since the last time Deacon had seen him just days earlier, standing rigid with a manaphone pressed to his ear. The moment the teleporter activated, his head snapped toward Deacon, his expression making it seem as though he were seeing a ghost.
As Deacon crossed the threshold into the lounge, Bjorn immediately ended the call he'd been on mid-sentence, giving Deacon a thorough look over that took in every detail of his appearance.
He could see that Deacon no longer wore his Barbarian Armor Set that he’d purchased with him a day and a half ago, instead finding his nephew dressed in dark linen cloth of such exceptional quality that Bjorn had never seen before, not even worn by the most influential of nobles with their ridiculous displays of wealth.
His eyes tracked down to where a glass bottle with green and gold swirling gas was clipped onto Deacon's hip, along with… was that Bonehead's skull? Where was the rest of his body?
The most notable thing Bjorn observed was the complete absence of the other three party members who should have been returning with Deacon from what was meant to be a simple extermination mission.
The strongest entity they could have encountered within the tunnels would have been the Antlion Queen. However, like other insectoid mothers Bjorn knew of, her offensive and defensive capabilities were typically on par with beings only half as strong as the party.
Beyond that, Bjorn knew that with Deacon’s skill, as well as the skills of his companions, they should have been able to deal with the antlions without issue. The antlions’ numbers would have offered little advantage in confined spaces such as tunnels, a fact proven both by Bjorn’s own experiences and by one of the most famous examples in Earth’s history, the Battle of Thermopylae.
But it was when Bjorn looked up and met Deacon's eyes that everything the phone calls he'd been receiving over the past three hours had been trying to tell him was finally crystallized into horrifying certainty. The eyes of his nephew were dead, utterly devoid of the spark that he always had within them, and Bjorn knew with absolute certainty that something terrible had occurred in those tunnels.
Crossing the distance between himself and Deacon in an instant, Bjorn dropped to one knee so they would be at eye level and pulled his nephew into a tight embrace, desperately trying to offer whatever comfort he could, despite knowing it would not bring his nephew the closure he needed.
"...I'm sorry," Bjorn said somberly, the words feeling inadequate and hollow even as they left his mouth, and Deacon remained ramrod still in his arms without returning the hug or showing any acknowledgment that he'd even registered the contact.
Slowly pulling himself back from the one-sided embrace after several long moments of Deacon not responding at all, Bjorn found himself staring at his nephew's dead expression that had fixed itself on his face in a way that looked almost like a mask carved from stone, completely devoid of any emotion or life.
"Deacon..." Bjorn started to say, trying to find words that might break through whatever shock or trauma had seized his nephew's mind.
"Instructor Bjorn," Bonehead's voice suddenly cut in from where the half-skull hung at Deacon's hip, apparently deciding to take it upon himself to respond when he saw how Bjorn was trying to get through to Deacon but being met with nothing but silence.
"There were—" Bonehead began.
"There were casualties," Deacon interrupted in a voice that was flat and almost robotic in how completely devoid of inflection or emotion it was, like he was reciting information from a report rather than talking about the deaths of his closest friends.
"We got involved in a Hidden Quest in the area we were clearing and ventured into a Hidden Quest Zone that felt wrong from the start, and I suspect now that the wrongness was due to being called a Floor Guardian being directly involved in whatever was happening down there… Well, one of them was, but from what I could infer from the Floor Guardian called Djinn; everything that happened was the result of a bet between two of them."
Bjorn felt his blood run cold at those words.
He had been joking about the possibility of them finding a Hidden Quest when he'd given them the assignment, making light of the infinitesimally small odds of stumbling across something so rare, and Deacon had known he was joking about it, had understood it was meant to be encouragement rather than something serious.
As in his mind the most absurd thing they could find would have been the remains of broken weapons from his internal disciples of the Sovereign Blade’s Knight Order as he had sent them out there to clear out the tunnels back when they had first joined in for some practical experience, and the most interesting thing they had found while clearing out the tunnels were weird patches of sand cracks.
And now his nephew and his friends, kids who hadn't even completed Floor Ten yet, who were still in the early stages of their development as Climbers, had somehow gotten involved with Floor Guardians, beings so powerful and dangerous that even mentioning their existence was something most experienced Climbers refused to do?
They could not be lying about Floor Guardian involvement either, because the number of people who knew about Floor Guardians across the entire recorded history of the Tower could be counted on fewer than a hundred.
That knowledge was carefully guarded by those who possessed it, both because of how dangerous the Guardians were and because they were nearly impossible to prove as the Guardians themselves designed the Floors and would simply not appear if they did not wish to be seen.
Not to mention that the most reasonable explanation, given that their existence was not common knowledge, was that they preferred it to remain that way. Attempting to bring awareness of their existence to light might very well annoy them, and irritating beings capable of creating and influencing the Floors of the Tower would be a very bad idea.
"Inside the zone, we gained enough experience and Racial Levels to bring us all up to the threshold where we unlocked our first Racial Traits," Deacon continued in that same flat, emotionless tone while his downcast eyes remained fixed on Bjorn's face. "But even with those new abilities unlocked, I grew complacent with our progress and let my guard down, and we were ambushed by a General Rank mutant antlion that was a level higher than any of us and moved faster than I could track."
Bjorn placed his hands on Deacon's shoulders as his nephew spoke, trying to offer physical grounding even though he could feel how rigid Deacon's entire body was, like every muscle had locked into place.
"It killed Esmerelda first, speared her straight through the chest while I was too far away to reach her in time to do anything," Deacon said, and there was still no emotion in his voice, no crack or waver that would indicate he was processing what he was saying. "After Sam managed to snap me out of my shock by slapping me, I fought the mutant antlion alone while the rest of the Party dealt with dozens of Sand Golems that fell from the ceiling, but as the fight escalated, the golems merged into a single Elite construct that managed to pin me to the ceiling, and everyone else had to—"
"You do not need to say anymore," Bjorn interrupted gently but firmly, physically guiding Deacon to sit down in the sofa chair nearby.
As Deacon was lowered into the chair, Bjorn moved his right hand to cover Deacon's eyes in a gesture that was both protective and practical, softly hushing him before speaking in a calm, measured tone.
"Simply think about what happened from start to finish, and I'll copy the memory directly from your mind; you remember how I showed you my own memories and displayed them on the holo-table?" Bjorn asked, waiting for confirmation.
Listening to his uncle's instructions, Deacon nodded once, though his body remained completely rigid and tense despite being seated.
Bjorn pulled out a crystalline vial from one of his pouches and pressed it carefully against Deacon's temple, and almost immediately a blueish-red strand of energy that looked like frozen lightning began growing from the vial's rim, extending and thickening with each passing moment as more and more of the memory was extracted and preserved, until finally it reached the end of the vial where the full memory Deacon was recalling.
With the vial now filled with Deacon’s recollection of what happened, Bjorn quickly capped it to seal the contents before they could degrade or escape, and with his hand still covering Deacon's eyes to block his vision, Bjorn pocketed the Memory Vial and simultaneously pulled out a smaller open glass container filled with what looked like black-colored blades of grass or some kind of dried herb.
With his extensive and intimate knowledge of herbology gained from years of studying alchemy alongside his combat training, Bonehead immediately identified the herb in the vial that Bjorn was bringing toward Deacon's nose, and he made no move to alarm Deacon or raise any objection himself because he recognized it as a powerful but harmless sedative.
As soon as the herbs got within inches of Deacon's nose, his entire body went limp like someone had cut all the strings holding a puppet upright, and he slumped unconscious in the chair with his head lolling to the side.
"If it wasn't enough that he's on a timer, this happens..." Bjorn muttered to himself as he carefully untied and unclasped all the items that had been attached to Deacon's hip and waist, placing them gently on the glass coffee table beside the chair where his nephew was now sleeping.
He arranged the three translucent dice containing the preserved bodies of Esmerelda, Sam, and Jass in a neat row, then placed Bonehead’s half-skull beside them, along with the glass bottle holding what Bjorn assumed was something important. The swirling green and gold energy within it, and his inability to Identify the bottle, told him as much. He then took a moment to simply stare at the items that represented everything his nephew had lost that day.
Bjorn then carefully picked up Deacon's unconscious form and carried him out of the lounge room through the back entrance that led to the private quarters, taking him to the bedroom where Deacon had been staying and laying him down on the bed with as much care as he could manage before covering him with a blanket.
After ensuring Deacon was settled and would sleep for at least several hours, given the strength of the sedative he'd inhaled, Bjorn emerged back into the lounge room and immediately moved to the coffee table where he'd left the items from Deacon's person.
Entering the lounge properly now and closing the door to the private quarters behind him to muffle any noise that might disturb his nephew's rest, Bjorn picked up Bonehead's half-skull and brought it up to eye level, his expression deadly serious.
"Bonehead, tell me exactly what happened down there from what you remember, and tell me fast," Bjorn said in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument, his eyes boring into Bonehead's shadow-flame gaze. "Because I need to modify that memory vial to hide or obscure any displays of Deacon's Racial Traits and abilities before the families of your dead friends inevitably barge in here demanding answers and access to whatever evidence exists of how their children died."