Deacon jolted upright in bed, tossing the sheets off of himself and into the air as he gasped for air like a man who was in the middle of drowning. Over the next couple of minutes, he did his best to try to get his breathing under control, mentally having to repeat his breathing exercises his father had taught him to get himself to calm down.
Where the hell...?
The ceiling above him was far different than what he normally saw; the antiseptic gray of the academy dormitories was replaced with dark-stained wooden beams.
Confusion rippled through him.
Looking to his sides, he didn't see his calendar propped onto the dresser beside him, nor his manaphone that should have been charging. Hell, even his damn alarm clock wasn't even–
Then it hit him, like the oh so familiar feeling of a dagger digging into his gut.
The bonfire behind the mess hall…
The sound of music wafting through the edge of the academy campus, the smoke billowing into the nighttime air, the laughter spilling from the mouths of intoxicated cadets.
Sam and Luke had been arm-wrestling on overturned barrels. Esmerelda twirled barefoot in the firelight, dancing with either herself or anyone in their group. Jass had been locked in a half-serious argument with Bonehead over who was the better player in Warrior Showdown 8, with Bonehead trying to mingle with any woman nearby to get into their pants whenever Jass went to go refill her cup.
How a skeleton could even get it up was a question he instantly regretted asking, especially after Bonehead, for reasons only the System knew, decided to demonstrate in the middle of history class the moment he asked him.
Nevertheless, he was at the early graduation party the night before. He could still taste the acrid taste of beer and vomit that fermented in his mouth as he slept.
"How long was I there?" he asked himself, blinking hard as he dragged a hand down his face. His mouth was dry, tongue thick and sour with sleep. Why did I leave the academy grounds today of all days? I already agreed to meet up with everyone before we met up at the hall…
"Deacon," a faint voice whispered into his ear.
His head snapped to his right while his right hand shot toward his hip, searching for one of the daggers he kept hidden on his waist. His heart was racing. His eyes scanned the room wildly, seeking to find out who had whispered in his ear. What the actual shit was that? Some sort of wraith?
After a few tense minutes had passed, he became sure of two things: One, that he was alone, second, the only thing he had on him were his shoes as the daggers he'd always kept on the back of his hip were gone. Shit.
"Am I still drunk from last night?" he muttered under his breath, trying to reason with himself as he rubbed the side of his head with his wrist and watched as dust drifted lazily through the sunbeams that peaked through the window beside him. He even cringed at the smell of both his morning breath and the ale Bonehead and the other alchemist in training had made for the party.
The gear that he was wearing during the party now littered the floor, the daggers that should have been strapped to his back, pouches, short-blades, all together formed a crooked path starting from the bed he was atop of and out the open door.
His eyes narrowed as beyond the doorframe, he saw a familiar-looking carpet.
"... Am I in the cabin?" he murmured aloud, voice catching on the edge of disbelief. "…How did I get here? I haven't been able to find this place ever since…"
He turned slowly, taking it in.
"What the actual hell is going on here?" He muttered to himself as he took notice of the stone fireplace that stood a few feet away from him, the iron clasps on the far wall, where his father's weapons had once hung, were now bare, just like how he remembered them to be from the day his father disappeared, and the large cabinet beside the bed.
The table his father had carved runes into for… something he still wasn't sure of, runes that were now worn to the point where he couldn't read them. Even the ones that were visible looked far too complex for him to even begin to decipher. The dent in the doorframe, left by a wild swing of a too-heavy practice blade in his hand.
He'd been six, maybe eight, eager to impress his father, and had accidentally struck one of the walls that held up an oil lantern. It had flown from its hook, clattered to the ground, and set the curtain ablaze. The beating he'd received from his father that day had been brutal.
Now that I think about it… Deacon thought, trailing off for a moment. I'm pretty sure that's how I got that scar on my ass… And here I thought I got it from a Vinetail strike.
But going back to the main point, this was the cabin. The cabin he was raised in for the first eight and a half years of his life, before he was grabbed by the academy enforcers when he'd gone beyond the boundary line of the cabin.
When they grabbed him, he did his best to fight them off, but expecting an eight-year-old to hurt two Tier 2 Classers was more of a joke than thinking the cadets from Class Z could become anything more than beggars, or meat shields that the nobles purchase to protect their kids when they climb and get into an unfortunate situation.
Letting out a deep exhale, Deacon reached for his pendant that hung off his neck, a metal snake, coiled tight in the shape of an S, subconsciously rubbing the cooled metal without much thought, as whenever he would do so, it grounded him back to the present.
"Deacon!"
The voice ripped through his head like a thunderclap.
His body moved before thought could catch up. He threw himself off the bed, hitting the floor hard, shoulder scraping against the rough floorboards as he rolled onto one knee. Moving on pure instinct, he drew the dagger hidden in the back of his right shoe that he somehow still had on and cast Ignis to summon a fireball in his open left palm.
His heart was beating a mile a minute as his eyes darted around him, searching for the wraith or for whoever was calling his name. Ah crap if it is a wraith, I don't have any spectral grease or any anti-spectral items on hand. Fuck me for cheaping out and not buying some.
He tightened his grip on his dagger and pumped his fireball with more mana. At the very least, if it were a wraith, he could distract it with the flames and break the window with his dagger and escape back to the academy, where one of the professors might have something on hand to kill the wraith stalking him, because he sure as hell didn't have anything with anti-spectral properties.
While unbeknownst to him, as his eyes scoured the room around him, the pendant that clung to his chest began to quiver, and the eyes on the snake faintly glowed dark green before it released a thin tuft of mana infused gas into the air.
He'd only noticed the subtle change in the ambient mana when the air in front of him suddenly began to shimmer. He took a tentative step back as he watched the shimmering begin to stabilize and form into a humanoid shape. ...Wraiths aren't humanoid in shape...
Kneeling in front of him.
Heavy armor that was matte black in color and dented to high hell, crusted in dried blood and streaks of grime. But… it was a familiar silhouette.
The grip he had on the dagger that he'd taken out from his shoe loosened, and the fireball in his open left palm snuffed out.
"...Dad?"
The figure solidified, his father's face beneath a helm split down the center, beard grown thick and wild, eyes sunken but sharp as obsidian. He looked older, far older than what he remembered him to look like.
His soot-covered, armored hands reached forward and clamped onto Deacon's shoulders. "You've grown so much, my boy…"
"I'm sorry, Deke," his father said, his voice raw with emotion, as his eyes darted over Deacon's form. "I didn't want to leave you, I swear. Not in the Tower. But I had no choice."
Deacon's throat tightened. "You… You… I just woke up one day and you were-"
"Your mother was taken," his father said, cutting him off. "They had her by the throat and I… I wish I could say more, but they're watching me, and we don't have long to talk."
He looked over his shoulder suddenly, at something Deacon couldn't see, just past the boundary of the cabin and toward the birds flying high in the sky.
His hand trembled on Deacon's shoulder.
"Wait – wait, what do you mean you found mother? You… You told me she died years ago," Deacon said, his mouth going dry. "From a sudden Troglodyte invasion on Floor 31."
His father's eyes snapped back to him. "I lied… Things… forces were at work far beyond what you could imagine, and you knowing about them then would have put you in incredible risk. The Multiverse itself is far more dangerous than you think."
The what?
"The Multiverse?" Deacon repeated, confusion displayed across his face.
"That's what's beyond the Tower," his father answered, a faint smile emerging on his face as he cradled the side of Deacon's face. "It's where I am right now and where you need to reach."
"Beyond?" Deacon's eyes went wide, staring at his father in confusion. "But no one's reached the top of the Tower. The academy said the highest we've reached was Floor 34, and we've been stuck on that floor for decades now."
His father's eyes remained on him for a period of time before once more looking over his shoulder and clicking his teeth.
"Listen to me Deke, do you trust me?" His father asked, turning back to face him, tearing his gaze away from whatever he was looking at before.
"Of course," Deacon immediately answered, only for his mouth to go dry as a trickle of dread started to fill the pit in his stomach. "Always."
"Reach Floor 50. That's where the exit is. That's where you can reach me, and when you do, you can help me find your mother," his father said, his expression hardening. "Trust no one but yourself, especially anyone in the guilds and nobles. Trust the friends that you've made for yourself. But never reveal who you are, our kind is hunted boy."
Deacon's mouth moved to answer, but he stopped himself as he processed his father's words. "Our kind? What do you mean, our kind?"
His father's expression softened, just for a second. And then it hardened again. "There is so much I should have told you. So much of our people's history that you should have learned."
"You must survive," he said, the same words he'd spoken to him the night before he vanished. "You must become stronger. Strong enough to stand beside me."
The form of his father began to flicker.
"You must escape the Tower!"
"Wait! How do I!" Deacon shouted as his hands shot out to grab the shoulders of his father.
But just as his fingers were about to brush against the armor of his father, a loud, thunderous crack echoed within the cabin.
From the shadows, a massive fur-lined boot burst forth and slammed into his father's midsection with the force of a cannonball.
Deacon's breath caught in his throat.
One second, his father had been kneeling in front of him, holding onto his shoulder.
The next, he was gone.
His form scattered into burning fragments that crumbled midair, not unlike the ash he'd seen when he went with his father to attend an old lady's funeral and watched as his father scattered the old woman's ashes in the air.
And all that remained in place of his father was a drifting trail of embered ash.
Stepping from the shadows of the room was a man. But to call him just a man would be a disservice, heretical some would even say; for he was Herculean in size, his frame thick with muscle and draped in grey and dark furs, standing a full head taller than anyone Deacon had ever seen. Only his arms and face were uncovered, both etched with glowing sigils that he couldn't make heads or tails of.
His pale skin began to shift with creeping layers of ice and shadow. Tendrils of frost were knitting themselves over his arms and face while black wisps coiled in the hollows of his eyes.
"Didn't expect that, did ya, you jötunn scum," the man said, his voice deep and casual, almost portraying himself as bored if it weren't for the wide grin on his face.
Then his eyes fell on Deacon.
His expression shifted from confusion to realization… to joy.
"Well. Now, now, now," he intoned, taking in the sight of Deacon's frozen expression. "Isn't this a sight to behold….I didn't know Mattias had a son."
Deacon's legs went numb as every fiber of his being was screaming at him to flee away from the being in front of him. But the man stepped forward and knelt in front of him, getting uncomfortably close to his face.
"They told me the only ones of jötunn descent were those monsters on the frontlines of our war, and that Mattias was the youngest at three hundred years of age," he said, his grin spreading into a full-blown smile.
He sniffed the air slightly, amused. "Yet here before me, a jötunn whelp… My, my, this must truly be my lucky day. I get to kill father and son."
The man reached out, hand bare, thick with frost. The shadows around his wrist twitched hungrily, extending toward Deacon's chest.
Deacon found himself frozen where he stood, unable to move away from the man in front of him as the shadows cracked the air in front of him as it was attempting to rip through the protections within the Tower and reach Deacon.
"Let the last thing you hear, you whoreson, be the name of your killer," the man chuckled. "Skalvorn."
As the shadows were mere millimeters away from touching his chest–
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
The voice of his father roared like the sky splitting apart. A blinding flash tore through the cabin.
Skalvorn didn't even get the chance to look before the blast caught him dead in the ribs, hurling him like a ragdoll across the room and through the far wall, vanishing in a trail of ice and shadow.
And then-
Mattias staggered forward, struggling to keep his form stable. The full weight of the System's protections was now bearing down upon both him and Skalvorn. They had broken the pact they had made with the System to enter the Tower temporarily and had harmed one of its inhabitants.
He dropped to his knees before Deacon and cradled his son's face in shaking hands.
Foreheads pressed together.
Flesh met hardlight.
"You must escape the Tower, Deke," Mattias said, voice splintering with static. "Once you do, you must travel the Multiverse and find the homeland of our kind."
"I– I don't understand-" Deacon stammered, his heart pounding like a war drum.
"There's no time, my boy. I am sorry." His father's grip on his shoulders tightened for a final heartbeat, as though he could anchor himself to this moment. His eyes bleeding with emotion as he stared into the eyes of his son, which reminded him of the coloring of his wife. "Never tell anyone what you really are… Grow stronger, my son."
Then-
He was gone. Along with the disappearance of his father was the crushing weight that had been suffocating the air around him.
However, to Deacon, the moments of silence that followed the disappearance of his father were far more suffocating than being in an undead lounge.
Deacon slumped beside his bed frame, struggling to both breathe and keep himself up, the dagger in his right hand had slipped from his fingers and landed with a dull clatter against the wooden flooring.
His lips parted. "What… was that?" he breathed.
No answer came.
"I-"
He attempted to pull himself up as his arms remained numb; reaching for the edge of the dresser to haul himself up, but his arms buckled and sent him tumbling back down, headfirst.
Pain arced across his head as he lay there, unable to move, breathing shallowly, staring at the shadows beneath his bed frame.
…What a way to start off my birthday.