Durthu and Eloise were crushed. Their friend had disappeared along with the entire chateaux and they couldn't detect him anywhere, hell, I couldn't detect him anywhere. For all purposes, this human boy had just ceased to exist at that moment. I decided to do my own bit of research, as I don't particularly even remember placing a chateaux or a trap of that nature on any floor of the tower. It turns out I was correct, this wasn't my doing but the doing of something else that placed that trap. The history of the structure was from the same society that created Cyrus's Rune Binding, but it seems they didn't just fade into disappearance like I thought.
Firstly, the society was highly matriarchal. The woman wasn't a queen per se, but something akin to a Grand Duchess. She took very good care of her people and her family, but a lower ranked Duke was angry that she rejected his marriage proposal some months ago, despite her already being married. This Duke took it upon himself to gather followers and storm her home, breaking in and killing numerous people. The reason she wasn't looking at Cyrus exactly, was because in his place was where the Duke had stood to kill the Grand Duchess and her three children, which would explain why they were ethereal and ghostly.
The chateaux wasn't haunted, it was like an isolated memory given form. The Grand Duchess had used a sophisticated kind of Magik called Runic Casting to teleport the Duke elsewhere, just as he killed her and her children out of anger. To put simply, that entire room was a trap room that Cyrus and Meri got trapped in. But… I can't figure out who gave this society this knowledge in the first place, who put the chateaux in my tower, nor where Cyrus went… so for the time being, we'll be following his comrades until Cyrus makes his return.
By the time Durthu managed to pull Eloise back to Flolials inn, it was midnight. The time phenomenon that happened inside the chateaux wasn't some weird illusion, it seemed they really were in there for several hours. The Draconi looked up from the table he was sitting at and paused upon seeing the two. They weren't hurt, they had no wounds, but he could clearly see they were disturbed and not only that but Cyrus was missing and he couldn't catch the slightest smell of Meri anywhere nearby. He stood up quickly and stared at them, expecting either of the two to say something, anything that would subside the thought at the back of his mind…
But those words never came. Durthu hung his head and went up to their room, with Eloise following him just as silently. The Draconi sat back down and put his hands over his face. He was part of the Draconic species tree, he'd lived for thousands of years, he'd witnessed the empires of species rise and fall, he'd seen many die over and over again… but this gave him some different feeling deep in his chest. He'd only known the little group for two years and some months, but he'd made a connection with them. It felt like… it felt like one of his own children had just died, and that was how Durthu and Eloise felt as well. After all, in their eyes he was gone without a trace. For all they knew, he and Meri had died when that circle went off.
They didn't know what to do or how to move forward. Cyrus was something like their leader, he usually had some plan for how to move forward, but now they didn't really know what to do. Dealing with the grief of Cyrus disappearing and, possibly even dying, they weren't in the right state of mind to make any rational decisions.
"Maybe… maybe he's okay." Durthu murmured.
"... What?" Eloise looked up from her own lap.
"Maybe they're okay. Maybe it just… teleported them somewhere and they'll get back soon." He was trying his hardest to rationalize.
Eloise only could think the worst, but she realized maybe Durthu was right. Maybe they could hold out hope, "Yeah, yeah, maybe they're okay. They'll come back soon. We just have to wait for them."
They were, unknowingly, going through the stages of grief. Angels don't ever "die" naturally, nor can anything in my realm harm them, so Eloise has never had to feel grief. She hadn't even been given the chance to interact with enough things to form meaningful bonds, and the same goes for Durthu. He has no concept of family and Cyrus was his first true friend, so he's never felt grief nor gone through the process. He just knew there was a sharp pain in his gut and he needed to make it go away, someway or another, and if that was holding out hope for his brother's return then so be it.
So they waited. They waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Before they knew it, spring had come. Spring had come and the human and his Lindwyrm still had yet to return. But this is where something surprising happened. It wasn't Durthu who got angry first. It was Eloise. When she realized both Autumn and Winter had passed with no sign of Cyrus she got angry and lashed out. She was spending more and more time out fighting beasts to get stronger.
Her anger rubbed off on Durthu eventually, who became just as angry. But they didn't know what they were angry at. Were they angry at Cyrus and Meri for even getting caught in that circle in the first place? Was it the ghostly woman of the chateaux for putting it there? Were they angry with me for putting them in this tower in the first place? They didn't know, they couldn't tell. The hope they held out for Cyrus returning was gone and was replaced only with rage, and they took out this rage on any manner of beast or monster they could come across. They were doing this so often they almost caused an extinction.
On the way to another outing to release their rage, Eloise overheard talk of an attack force. Someone had found the Boss Pillar to the next floor and was putting together a force to conquer it. The Orc and Angel shared a look, and then they went to join this team. They needed to get off this godforsaken floor, it was beginning to become unbearable knowing they lost two of their friends and still had a thousand more floors to go and they didn't plan on losing one another.
"So… you two want to join the attack force?" The leader looked at them with concern.
His concern was warranted, afterall. Over the past, what was it, almost a year now? They'd been fighting non-stop. The two acquired scars of all kinds but they both had very notable ones. Eloise had a large scar across her face. It looked as if something swung a large claw from her chin and dragged it up to her forehead, the scar was quite grisly. Durthu had been hit by something acidic, and thus from his right shoulder to about his ear was a large chemical burn. This isn't to mention all of the other scars littering their bodies.
"Is that a problem?" Eloise asked.
"I- uh- no." The attack force leader jotted their names down.
"Good. Let's go, D." She turned away and left.
Durthu looked at the attack force leader, "You are small."
That was all he said before he followed his companion. The two had climbed the ranks, they were in the top one thousand Climbers, and it seemed this attack force had the other top rankers on the list. Eloise read over it several times and hummed to herself. She took a look at Durthu and motioned at the list. Up until this point, he'd had very accurate assumptions of people's strength with a simple glance. He approached the list, which had pictures of each person beside their name.
He paused for a long second as he looked at all of the names before theirs and nodded to himself.
"They are strong. This won't be much trouble." Durthu said after about five minutes of silence.
"How many do you think are stronger than Cyrus?" Asked Eloise.
"He wouldn't be able to beat anyone before number 843." The orc estimated.
Eloise took this as acceptable and sat down. The force was going to begin today and start their journey towards the Pillar, so it wasn't like the two had time to wander off. Durthu sat beside her and sharpened his axes with an item he'd gotten known as an Eternal Whetstone. Eloise looked over her catalog of learned Magik's with satisfaction. Now, her specific type of Magik is Holy which is obviously meant to be support, it's designed to have little to no offensive capabilities… but somehow, she'd managed to create her own sub-type. It was volatile and violent, designed by her and for her, to inflict pain on enemies.
The process she used to create such a thing over the course of the past year was arduous and difficult, but when she finally managed to do so? It was… honestly, a bit horrifying to see. First, Holy Magik isn't like a solid, but is more akin to light and the energy of healing and repair. Obviously, many books and advancements you humans have are unavailable to other worlds, so Eloise had no idea that mass could be added to light to give it physical properties. After acquiring a book that told her that exact thing, well, all she had to do was figure out how to remove the healing aspect from it. But she had a sudden epiphany. Why remove the healing aspect, when she can just overly heal something?
By forming her Magik into the shape of weapons or objects, and then adding the subsequent amount of mass to it, she had given herself the ability to harm things with it. How? Well, imagine this for just a moment; a normal human being will only heal what they need to heal to a certain extent, but imagine if there was nothing that stopped that. A simple broken arm would keep healing and eventually the bone would duplicate only to cause more damage and duplicate again. Every muscle would continuously heal itself until eventually it overgrows and crushes your internal organs. That was what she had figured out. Horrifying, isn't it?
"Alright everyone, we're heading out!" The attack force leader shouted.
"Why is the weaker one leading us?" Durthu asked, "That man is the strongest here, yet he isn't leading."
"What?" Eloise turned to see where he had pointed.
He was pointing at a human man. He was Asian, more particularly a Japanese fellow. He had long black hair that was tied into a ponytail, he wore no armor but rather traditional japanese clothing which consisted of a black kimono with a kind of outfit called a gi underneath. His skin was fair, not too pale but he looked like he was out in the sun often enough to gain a tan, and his face. His facial expression was impossible to read, on a surface level he looked tired. His eyes had dark bags underneath them and his eyes themselves appeared to be looking far off into the distance.
But what was most peculiar about this fellow was his weapon. He had a single Tsurugi on his hip, a weapon neither Durthu or Eloise were familiar with, but they instinctively felt they should stay away from it. It was in its sheath, but it radiated a strong feeling of death, chaos, and violence. As if violence and bloodshed were ingrained into the sheathed blade.
This was the blade Susanoo, a weapon used by the god with the same name.
"Or him?" Durthu pointed at another man.
This man was also a human, a brown skinned fellow from Egypt. His hair was curly, like that of a sheep's hide, his beard was long and unkempt just like his hair, and his skin was a brown akin to bronze. His eyes were black and he looked focused as he held a peculiar pose and was muttering prayer to the sun under his breath. His armor was a traditional kind of Egyptian armor that was made of scales of bronze, animal hides, and bones. On his hip was the weapon called Osiris. It was a Khopesh, a sickle shaped blade.
This weapon as well radiated a feeling that made Eloise uncomfortable, but she could recognize it. It was the same uncomfortability she got from Durthu's axes. Osiris is a weapon closely associated with a god of Death, and thus it radiates that same kind of energy.
"They're the strongest here, yet they are not leading. Why?" Durthu looked at Eloise.
"Strength doesn't always equal leadership. Let's just go." She pulled his arm.
The two followed the group to their destination, the Pillar where the boss for this floor resided. There was literally no way to know what it was, as there never seemed to be a close tie between the actual boss of the floor and the entities that resided on the floor itself. Yes, that was done on purpose. Eloise was making sure to conserve her energy while Durthu helped fight off any beasts that approached.
They were proceedings with little trouble, this seemed to be a recurring thing. The closer to the Pillar they got, the less things they had to fight, which allowed for rest and recuperation. It was a purposeful design choice, I don't want everyone to die from exhaustion. I need to see if there are any specimens worth anything, after all. For what? You'll find out later.
"That sword, where did you get it?" Durthu approached the Japanese man.
The man yawned and turned to the Orc, looking up at him through his hair, "Oh, uh… Don't know, I just appeared in this tower with it. Hey, didn't you two used to travel with a dragon and another boy?"
"That's not important. What is your name?" Durthu changed the subject.
The man had a heavy Japanese accent when he spoke, "Where I'm from, it's courtesy to introduce yourself first." The man smiled.
"I am Durthu." He was put off by the man's smile, it disturbed him deeply.
"My name is Yamauchi Noboru. I'm a Japanese man from Earth, what are you?" He introduced himself.
"I am an Orc from a realm known as Jotunheim." The Orc said.
"Nice to meet you." The Japanese man, Yamauchi Noboru, turned away and walked away from him with a smile on his face.
The Egyptian fellow with the Khopesh approached Durthu, tapping his shoulder from behind, "Hello, are you one of the people of Anak?"
"What is an Anak?" Durthu turned.
"Hm… nothing, nice to meet you, large man." The Egyptian man held out his hand and paired it with eye contact and a smile.
Durthu took his hand and smiled back, confused about what was happening, "I am Durthu, an Orc."
"My name is Onuphrius, an Egyptian. Nice to meet you, young man."
"How did you know I was young?" Durthu got defensive.
"All of you younger folk carry yourselves the same, regardless of origin. You and that girl there, with the wings, have recently lost someone." Onuphrius hummed, scratching his chin, "A comrade perhaps?"
"Why do you know that." Durthu was becoming agitated and grabbed his axes.
Onuphrius looked at the axes, "It is only an observation. I have been through the stages of grief before, young man. I can tell you, being angry will help nothing."
The human turned and walked away. Durthu watched him leave and suddenly that sharp pain he felt on the day of Cyrus's disappearance came flooding back. He frowned and went back to Eloise. He sat down quietly and stared at the ground, angry all over again. The Angel looked at him and put her hand on his shoulder, to offer some kind of assistance. Durthu paused and calmed himself down as much as possible, he needed to protect Eloise. He knew that's what Cyrus would've wanted him to do.
Eloise looked up when she heard clapping hands.
"Alright everyone! We're going to be headed inside the Pillar now! Stay close to each other and be careful!" The leader shouted.
"C'mon, D." Eloise stood.
"Right behind you." Durthu followed her lead.
He watched Yamauchi and Onuphrius closely; they were extremely suspicious to the Orc.
.
.
.
.
.
Upon entering the Pillar the attack force was instantly caught off guard. Most Pillars were dark, gritty, and seemed more like a dungeon or an arena, but this place was different. It was bright and warm, the sun was shining on their skin and the wind was blowing through their hair. Even Yamauchi was surprised. The Pillar was a massive field of flowers in a large open field. There was no sign of a monster, or anything living at all. There were only the flowers and the sun.
Eloise kneeled down to touch one of the flowers to confirm if they were real, and they were. She could feel the soft petals against her skin and could smell the beautiful scents they let off. Onuphrius took a deep breath and sighed with content. This was suspicious and it was making Durthu highly uncomfortable. He had felt it this entire time, a sense of deep uncomfortability in his gut, but now it was in overdrive.
And he was right to be uncomfortable.
After a few minutes of breathing in the scents, the Climbers began to fall over and drop like flies. The group assumed it was some kind of monster and thus grouped closer together, but even still they were collapsing. Not dead, just… sleeping.
"It's a sedative! The flowers are a sedative! Cover your noses!" Yamauchi shouted, covering his nose.
"Durthu I can't… stay…" Eloise had already breathed in too much, she fell over into the flowers.
"Eloise!" Durthu shouted, "What do we do?! Where is the monster?!"
The three still standing, Durthu, Yamauchi, and Onuphrius, stayed close together and kept their noses covered in fear of falling into slumber. After a while, they thought there was no monster and this floor was merely designed to kill them, but then Onuphrius lit a flame. The flowers let out shrieks and out of them came small glowing orbs that all compiled into one big orb, before forming itself into the shape of a… man? Woman? It was very hard to tell.
"Put that fire away, lest you interrupt their slumber!" The thing shrieked.
"What are you?! What is wrong with Eloise?!" Durthu shouted, preparing to swing.
"I am a Wrin'Tome. Your friend is okay, she is merely asleep, seeing her most desired dream." It smiled, looking at the Orc, "All living things are plagued with nightmares, fears, and loss. I can put you into a dream, where none of that exists."
"Do not listen to it." Yamauchi drew his Tsurugi from its sheath, "It is leaving out a crucial detail."
"He is right. What's the catch?" Onuphrius also drew his blade.
The Wrin'Tome just smiled at them.
"You eat them." Durthu stared at it, just knowing from the look.
"That just means we need to kill it, right?" Yamauchi grinned like a maniac.
As the battle began, Eloise was having the most peaceful of dreams. Cyrus had never left, Meri was resting on the floor, and she was petting his head. They were sitting in Flolials inn, talking and laughing all together like they used to. She could look at him joking around with Durthu and smile, and feel the rigidness of Meri's scales under her fingers. The inn was warm and there was the distinct smell of Flolial cooking something to eat in the kitchen just behind the bar.
She let out a sigh of relief, the memories of the real world fading to the deepest recesses of her mind. She had no more worries, they could explore and climb together without any trouble at all, no one got seriously injured or died either. She was in true bliss. After a few floors, she would look over at Cyrus and he would look at her, and there'd be an unspoken spark right there, and Durthu would come in like he always does to interrupt the moment with his goofiness.
Durthu chopped off an arm, only for the Wrin'Tome to use the surrounding flowers to grow it back. They'd been fighting for hours by this point and hadn't made any progress, anytime they harmed it the damned thing would use the surrounding flowers to regenerate itself and they couldn't light the field on fire because that would kill all of their companions. Onuphrius was starting to get angry and Yamauchi was still smiling like a maniac as he fought this thing. Durthu looked at Eloise, the peacefulness of her resting face, and knew he had to protect her and get her out of this place.
This time he swung at the torso of the Wrin'Tome and when he retracted his axe, he saw a small glowing ball. He blinked and quickly stepped back, using his hair to stop any fumes from getting into his nose and putting him into a slumber.
"There's a little glowing ball in its chest! We need to break it!" Durthu shouted.
"In its chest? Well that just simplified things!" Yamauchi ran forward with Onuphrius and Durthu on either side.
The Wrin'Tome hissed and raised several sharp appendages from the ground, "Damn you all!"
The three coordinated perfectly, using Durthu as a jumping platform or to get out of line of sight to attack, Durthu provided the perfect defense and great offense when they attacked. They were steadily damaging its chest and torso, getting closer and closer to that core to kill this damned thing.
As the fight progressed, Durthu could feel a sense of unity happening between the three wielders of the weapons, as if they were always meant to run into each other eventually. Yamauchi jumped off of the orcs' back and spun, using his Tsurugi to cut through two vines aiming for sleeping Climbers, he threw the blade in the chest of the Wrin'Tome, chipping its core. This act earned a deafening scream of pain, but that didn't stop them at all. Onuphrius threw his own sword into its shoulder to knock the creature off balance, and Durthu jumped forward to deal the killing blow.
He activated his Magik and used the blunt side of his axe to slam the Susanoo deeper into the Wrin'Tome's body. The core cracked and shattered, and to finish it off Onuphrius lit it aflame so that there was no way it could regenerate.
As Eloise dreamed of her perfect life, she could feel something about this was deeply wrong. With the death of the Wrin'Tome, she began to remember the truth. Her dream turned to reality, Cyrus's presence was no longer there. She couldn't feel Meri's tough scales under her fingers anymore, the pain of her scars shot through her body as she remembered when she got them, and she began to cry. She cried and cried as her dream crumbled around her to make way for reality, so she could awaken.
Her real body began to shake as tears left her closed eyes. She wanted that dream to go on for just a little bit longer, she wanted to be able to see them for just a little longer, she wanted that feeling to last for just a few more seconds. But it couldn't.
She felt light hitting her eyes and slowly blinked them open. She was looking at Durthu's worried face and could feel the tears that stained her cheeks. She blinked the remaining tears away and sat up, looking around and seeing the burning pile.
"What happened?" She asked.
"The flowers put everyone to sleep and we had to kill a thing." Durthu explained, "Are you okay? Why are you crying?"
"It's… I'm fine. We won? We can leave to the next floor?" Asked Eloise, wiping the tears from her face.
"Yeah, come on." Durthu looked worried for her but led her to the door that had appeared.
The two opened the door to the next floor, and they were greeted by quite the odd environment. There was rain pouring from the sky, almost constantly. There was little to no wiggle room either. They appeared in front of a castle gate, by taking in his surroundings Durthu could see mountains surrounding them in each cardinal direction. The rain was beating him down and he used his own body to lessen the rain hitting Eloise.
The two were part of the first 1,000 to even touch this floor. The gate town was covered in rain and the castle loomed over. Despite this small army being the first ones to officially touch this floor… There were already people here. The first to notice them was a small child who just ran up to a man in armor and pointed at them.
"Stand behind me." Durthu whispered to Eloise, who didn't even look to be paying attention.
"Hello, Climbers are you?" The man in armor asked.
"We are." Yamauchi didn't look bothered by the rain, "How are you here when we just conquered the last floor?"
"We are not like you. We did not come from outside of this place, we were born inside this place." The man in the armor stated, "From this point onwards you will find many places like this. Behave while you are in our kingdom."
The man then left them to their own devices. Durthu and Eloise broke off from the main group, but not without Yamauchi and Onuphrius stopping them for a quick word.
"If you two ever decide you need some new members, we'll be happy to join." Onuphrius said.
"I like this large orc, he's fun to fight with." Yamauchi grinned.
"Yeah… we'll keep that in mind." The girl nodded and pulled Durthu away.
This was a new environment, so the two were trying to be careful. The first thing they needed to do was find somewhere to escape this rain. They couldn't actually read any of the signs, but Durthu accurately assumed a building was some type of inn or a bar, and so they went inside.
When they stepped through the door, the ring of the bell alerted everyone inside of their presence. It seemed only the inhabitants of this little kingdom were in the tavern. The looks they got made them both uncomfortable, but in different ways. Eloise could feel filthy gazes on her, and Durthu felt threatened. The two approached the bar, staying close to each other and away from the people sitting at tables. There was a man and a woman behind the bar, both of them looked up at Durthu and eyed Eloises's wings.
"Who are you?" The woman asked. She was young, maybe in her thirties.
"We're Climbers. We just need a place to stay for a while until we can find a way up." Eloise explained.
The man, maybe in his early forties, looked annoyed, "We know that. What are your names?"
"Durthu and Eloise." The Orc introduced them, "Can we have a room?"
"Hm. Two beds is three silver coins a night." The woman held out her hand expectantly.
"Uh…" Durthu and Eloise looked at each other and then at her, "We don't… have silver."
Durthu dropped two thick golden coins on the table, "Will this do? We don't know the currency here."
"My god…" The man looked astonished, "Stay as long as you like! Food will be provided as well!"
The two looked at each other but went up to their room without a word. Eloise sat on one of the, well it was more of a cot than a bed. She sat down and just stared at her lap for a long while. She could feel Durthu was looking at her, but the girl couldn't bring herself to look up and meet his gaze, because she knew that would mean she had to tell him what her dream was and she couldn't bring herself to do it. Yes, she was angry and she missed that dumb human boy and his reptile. She wanted the old times back when they were happy, but speaking about her dream? About how that was her perfectly ideal world? It would be akin to admitting he was never going to come back, because underneath all of her boiling anger there was still hope that one day he'd come knocking.
But that day was starting to seem further and further away. She took a second to compose herself, she stilled her gently shaking hands and blinked any semblance of tears from her eyes before she looked up at the young orc sitting across from her.
"What happened?" His voice was softer, far softer than it ever had been. He was talking as gently as he could, "What was your dream, Eloise?"
"..." She took a long second to answer. Her breathing got shaky as she spoke, "Meri and Cyrus had never gotten taken. We were all so happy and… and okay. He was still smiling and you two were still joking like idiots and… Oh, Father…"
Durthu didn't say anything. He just looked at her without a word, because he didn't know what he could possibly say. He'd never been in this situation before.
"I just want them back, D." The child put her hands together and rested her forehead against them, "Please, Father, bring them back to us… Please."
Durthu didn't believe in her god, he didn't even know anything about him, but he joined her in her prayer. In her begging to a higher power for the return of their friend, because he felt the same way she did.