Ch 184 – Strained Introductions
Tick.
Three hours had passed since his assisted nap, and Deacon now stood with his back pressed against the wall of the Sovereign Blade’s meeting room, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Across from him, Bonehead reclined on the large table in the center of the room, his half-skull propped against a stack of books that Bjorn had arranged to help him conserve his mana reserves.
That way, when the inevitable happened, he would be able to use his mana strings to move his head.
Tick.
This was Deacon’s first time entering this particular room, despite having been part of the Knight Order for nearly three months, and it was exactly how one would expect a high-ranking meeting room to look. It was a large, minimal space dominated by a massive oval holo-table with the insignia of the Sovereign Blade etched into its polished dark oak surface, and its projector was attached to the ceiling.
Seats were arranged all around it, and an analog clock mounted high on the back wall seemed to tick louder than any clock had a right to.
Tick.
And with it being his first time in this room, the unfamiliar surroundings did absolutely nothing to ease the anxiety and dread that had been building in his chest since the moment he'd woken up from that forced sleep, his mind immediately returning to what had happened and what was coming next.
Tick.
Bonehead’s shadow-flame gaze remained fixed on Deacon from across the room, while Deacon kept his own eyes locked on the floor beneath his feet. He could not bring himself to look at his friend for multiple reasons, all of them twisting together in his gut like knives:
His failure to protect the people who had trusted him to lead them, people he considered family despite not sharing a single drop of blood with any of them. And there was the fact that, in his fit of grief, he had accused his now only living best friend of not caring about their deaths, even though Bonehead had lost those same people, friends he had known for even longer than Deacon had.
Tick.
Truly, how pathetic was he? To say something like that to someone he considered to be his brother in all but blood.
Tick.
"Deke," Bonehead said quietly, his voice cutting through the silence and the relentless ticking that seemed to echo in Deacon's skull. "Deacon, this isn't—"
Click.
The sound of the Meeting Room door opening stopped Bonehead's next words mid-sentence and caused both him and Deacon to whip their heads toward the entrance that swung open agonizingly slowly, the movement doing absolutely nothing to fill the growing pits in their stomachs and instead only making the dread worse with each inch the door traveled.
Nor did the solemn look on Bjorn’s face help as he pulled the door fully open and held it there, stepping aside to allow Sam’s parents, Lord Ferros Barrenthal and Lady Victoria Barrenthal, as well as Jass’s father, Ian Pines, to enter.
From what Deacon had heard from his uncle, Jass’s mother, Jane, had become bedridden after receiving news of her daughter’s death, and their son, Jass’s older brother Jonah, was currently at home caring for her through her grief.
Stepping away from the wall where he’d pressed himself flush against, Deacon couldn't help but recall the first time he'd met Sam's parents all those years ago, when they were both just kids without any real understanding of what the Tower would demand from them.
He had been twelve years old when he first encountered Lord and Lady Barrenthal during a sleepover Sam had hosted at his family’s manor. As he followed Sam through the front garden toward the entrance doors, he marveled at what it must be like to live in such a place. In doing so, he had glimpsed Lord and Lady Barrenthal through a window on the third floor, glowering down at him.
Half a day later, when Deacon had woken up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, he'd noticed that Sam was missing from the blanket fort they'd constructed, and after quickly relieving himself, he'd begun searching the massive manor for his friend.
During his search, he'd heard a pained noise that sounded distinctly like Sam coming from behind a set of large double doors, followed immediately by a muffled gravely voice yelling something he couldn't quite make out through the thick wood.
Worried that something terrible had happened to his friend, Deacon had pushed open the doors with all the strength his twelve-year-old body could muster.
The sight that greeted him was Sam on his knees in the center of a training room, panting hard and clutching the bottom of his staff with white-knuckled hands. At the far end of the room stood his father, Lord Barrenthal, a wand held lazily in one hand. His two-meter frame looked incredibly daunting and imposing, especially with the oppressive shroud of pure magical pressure radiating from him in waves that had immediately made Deacon break out in a cold sweat.
Deacon did not remember exactly what had happened after that moment. The details had always been hazy and fragmented in his memory, likely because being under the effects of that oppressive magical shroud had made it nearly impossible to focus on anything other than the sound of his own heart pumping blood through his veins in panicked double-time.
Still, he knew he had somehow managed to help Sam back onto his feet and bring him to the fort in his bedroom.
Once they were safely in Sam’s room and his friend had locked himself in the connected bathroom, Deacon heard the sound of a few tears being let loose. The muffled sobs were something Sam had clearly been holding back until he was somewhere private.
Afterward, Sam emerged having taken several potions from the extensive collection he kept in his bathroom to recover from what Deacon assumed had been some kind of brutal training session, or perhaps even a punishment from his father.
They'd both gone back to bed after that without saying a single word about what had happened, and not once in all the years since had Sam brought up the possibility of hosting another sleepover at his family's manor, and Deacon had never asked why.
Deacon couldn't help but steel his nerves as best he could manage while his illusionary dark brown human-looking eyes met and held the burning gaze of Lord Ferros Barrenthal that seemed to be trying to peel back his skin and see directly into his soul.
Sliding his gaze away from Lord Barrenthal, Deacon gave his full attention to the one beside him, only to be met with the icy, analytical stare of Lady Victoria Barrenthal, which was somehow even more unsettling than her husband’s.
After holding her gaze for what felt like the necessary amount of time to be respectful, Deacon then shifted his attention to the last parent in the room, whom he was meeting for the first time.
Ian Pines, Jass’s father, was glaring at him with rage-filled intensity, his expression making it clear that he was barely restraining himself from attacking Deacon on the spot. This was further proven by how his right arm kept reaching for the massive glaive on his back, only for him to stop himself before he could fully commit to drawing it.
"Please, sit down," Bjorn offered in a carefully neutral tone, gesturing toward the seats arranged around the massive circular holo-table that dominated the room.
"I want the remains of my son first," Lady Barrenthal said pointedly, her icy gaze sweeping away from Deacon and Bonehead as the skeleton used his mana to float himself over to a position beside Deacon at roughly eye level with him. "Before we discuss anything else."
"And my daughter's remains as well," Ian Pines added, his voice rough with barely suppressed emotion that seemed ready to explode into violence at the slightest provocation. “That is, if you hadn’t left it behind in that so-called Hidden Quest Zone she died in.”
Deacon unclenched his right fist and held it palm-up, revealing two translucent dice the Djinn had given him, one containing Sam’s preserved corpse and the other holding Jass’s body.
He found that he could not stop himself from staring at the miniature forms of his friends visible through the clear material, and with each passing second, he felt the growing sense of guilt and failure sink its roots deeper into his heart until it felt as though it were choking him from the inside.
He was pulled abruptly out of his spiraling thoughts when the die storing Sam's remains and the one holding Jass's body suddenly rose from his palm without him consciously willing them to move, lifting into the air before floating across the room to settle gently into the respective palms of the two fathers who had extended their hands to receive them.
Lord Ferros Barrenthal stared down at the miniature form of his youngest son’s corpse through the transparent surface of the die. His gaze was immediately drawn to the gaping, fist-sized hole punched straight through Samuel’s chest where his heart should have been.
His eyes then traveled upward, taking in the rest of his son’s preserved form, before freezing completely when he saw the peaceful smile displayed on Samuel’s face, even in death.
The sight of that smile seemed to hit Lord Ferros like a physical blow to the chest, his carefully maintained expression of restrained composure washing away and being replaced by something raw and broken that made him look decades older in the span of a few seconds.
It was a stark contrast to his wife, Lady Victoria, who stood beside him with shaking hands and eyes that had grown noticeably moist, yet still maintained her collected, cool demeanor despite the obvious pain she was experiencing at seeing his dead son in front of her.
Ian Pines found himself in a similar state to Lord Ferros, staring down at the preserved remains of his daughter contained within the die with an expression of pure shock as though his brain was refusing to fully process what his eyes were showing him, unable to reconcile the image of his vibrant living daughter with the corpse he now held in his palm.
“Please,” Bjorn spoke up after giving them several seconds of respectful silence to process what they were seeing. He quickly erected a barrier of his own mana to shield both Deacon and Bonehead from the rising oppressive pressure beginning to emanate from the three grieving parents, getting the protective measure in place just in time. Without it, the combined weight of magical pressure from three Peak Tier 2 individuals could have crushed the two survivors where they stood and killed them outright. “Sit, so you may witness what happened to your children, including their final moments and how they died.”
The reminder of why they were actually here seemed to pull the three parents back into the present moment, and they visibly reined in the magical pressure they'd been unconsciously releasing, the oppressive atmosphere in the room easing slightly as they moved to take their seats at the holo-table.
The seating arrangement put Lord Ferros Barrenthal directly across from Bjorn, with his wife, Lady Victoria seated to his right and Ian Pines to his left, while on Bjorn's side of the table, Deacon sat to his uncle's right, and Bonehead's floating half-skull reclined in the seat to Bjorn's left, creating two groups facing each other across the polished surface.
Bjorn pulled the modified Memory Vial from his pocket. It no longer contained only the bluish-red lightning of Deacon’s memories, but was now shot through with streaks of inky black where Bonehead’s recollections had been added and integrated into the recording. He carefully inserted it into the receptacle built into the center of the holo-table.
As the Memory Vial injected its contents into the table, the holographic projector attached to the ceiling hummed to life with a soft whir.